Blog 4

The community collaboration has been such a good learning experience for me, both in terms of my experience working with my team and my many visits to the site. My group is very diverse. Each of us are majoring in something different, and all have different areas of expertise. Some of us are much more familiar with editing and film production, and some, like myself, are less experienced with this. At first I thought it was going to be very challenging to make a film, but now I feel more confident since I have learned many tricks and skills from my team members. Additionally, I've learned how important communication is for a team. Sometimes we were not in the same page, but when we found an effective way to plan, organize our ideas, and communicate, we were much more efficient.

In terms of the community partner, I think the kids at West Adams really started to open up during our last sessions. They shared so much with me and my team that it only added to our understanding of teh community around USC. During one of the site visits, we started to talk to the kids about the recent e-mail from Kappa Sigma. We read the e-mail to them out loud, and asked for their ideas and their response. When we did this, many of them opened up and expressed how they felt about society and its values. We started a whole discussion of how hip hop videos portray women in certain ways that makes them look like simple object. I found that in a lot of ways I shared the same ideas and feelings as they did. We were not different in the ways that we thought or felt. After talking to them about a variety of topics, including college, I found that these kids are no different from any other high schoolers. They all have aspirations, most want to go to college, and they constantly talk about improving their community. In fact, we all finally decided that we wanted our documentary to send a very specific message-- Although the media often portrays the neighborhood as dangerous and violent environment where no one goes to college or has aspirations, the kids are no different from any other student in suburban communities. These kids face the same challenges and conflicts as students at more affluent neighborhoods, including uniforms, segregation, and lack of administrative support.

After working on this project I think I am a more effective team member, and I feel like I learned very important things from the kids at my site. These kids and I are not different at all.