In education, teachers work to build critical thinking skills, media literacy and social responsibility. But first we have to get teens to want to learn.
Bored teens in a classroom. (Illustration by News Decoder using AI.)
A teacher once brought me into her high school class to talk about journalism. I faced a group of two dozen students who looked at me with blank expressions for half an hour. I tried to get them excited and instead came away traumatized and in great appreciation for high school teachers.
Since then I have worked with class after class of high school students and have come to realize that masked by those blank expressions is a deep curiosity, a great passion to learn and the desire to have their voices heard. The trick is to spark all that curiosity and passion and give them a platform.
That’s our mission at News Decoder. But more than that, we want to open young people’s horizons, deepen their understanding of the world and their place within it, help them feel part of a global community and empower them to amplify their voices and take action on issues and problems they feel are important.
We do that through storytelling and engaged dialogue.
Empowerment through storytelling
In storytelling we ask students to identify problems they see around them that they think are important but to focus on the people the problem affects and see if anyone is working on solutions. This gets them to see the connection between themselves and others through shared problems and solutions.
Then we ask them to see if that same problem manifests in other places around the world. This gets them to see the connection between where they live and the people who live in other places.
Finally, we ask them to tell this story through an article, podcast, video or some form of multimedia as if they were talking not to us or their teacher, but to their peers, family or strangers of any age, ethnicity or gender. Here they see the connections between themselves and an audience.
In a way, we turn the tables on those blank-faced kids. They are now faced with a blank-faced audience that they need to wake up and excite.
This is difficult but we help them along the way with our deep experience in writing and audio and visual mediums, so that they end up with a convincing and compelling story people want to read or hear or watch.
Instilling confidence
In the process, teens become experts about the problem they researched and so we go one step further. We give them the opportunity to get together with their peers and professionals to discuss the topic in live virtual roundtables before a global audience where they share their ideas and experiences. This is the engaged dialogue.
Students end up confident in their ability to assess the quality of information or the media they consume and confident in their own ideas.
Even the shyest students find they have within themselves the ability to ask questions to people they’ve never met before and find that these people will listen and treat them with respect. In preparing for the interviews they do for their stories or for their participation in virtual roundtables they build research skills. In conducting interviews they learn the power of listening.
Ultimately they build confidence and capacity in their communication, reflection and critical thinking while deepening their knowledge of global issues.
We call all this transformative learning. Join us in this journey.
Marcy Burstiner is the educational news director for News Decoder. She is a graduate of the Columbia Journalism School and professor emeritus of journalism and mass communication at the California Polytechnic University, Humboldt in California. She is the author of the book "Investigative Reporting: From premise to publication."