The Edison Tech Documentary Project

Students from Edison Career and Technology High School Working to Film Documentaries for Rochester Teen Film Festival

(April 14, 2022) The Rochester Teen Film Festival in August will feature students from Edison Career and Technology High School, embarking on a project that aligns the District’s Career and Technology Education (CTE) curriculum to core subjects. Edison, led by principal Jacob Scott, will host a private screening for the students who worked on the film in early June.

Students at Edison Career and Technology High School campus embarked on a cross-curricular project. The project, stemming from an initiative facilitated by CTE Director, Sheldon Cox, was designed by Participation in Government & Economics (PIG/ECO), English Language Arts and Digital Media Arts and Communications (DMAC) teachers. The PIG/ECO classes are from P-TECH Rochester, an academic and career program housed at the Edison campus.

The classes immersed themselves in the topic of the attainability of the “American Dream.” In Participation in Government (PIG) and Economics classes, students are exploring governmental and societal oppression elements such as; redlining, mortgage loans and federal housing authority, the role of realtors, buildings, and banks, long-term effects resulting from redlining and FHA mortgages, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. In ELA, students read fiction (The Great Gatsby and A Raisin in the Sun) and non-fiction (articles, interviews, historical documents) to create focused, contextually-grounded questions for interviews with local voices. The unit’s summative centerpiece is the documentary. Students in the DMAC pathway will produce the interviews and create the documentary in Video & Television Production.

To delve into these topics, students commenced interviewing local individuals with expertise in these areas. The interviews were conducted around the city of Rochester and highlighted locations relevant to the unit. On Thursday, April 13, 2022, students began speaking with interviewees and interviews will continue into early May. Interviewees include: School Board Commissioner Camille Simmons, Assembly Member Demond Meeks, Rochester Mayor Malik Evans, Former Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren, PathStone Foundation founder Shane Wiegand, and author Justin Murphy. Murphy recently published a book about educational disparities in Rochester.

Students involved in this project will participate in fieldwork; conduct interviews, and produce the documentary in the Video, Television & Production studio at Edison. Students will create the script for the documentary in English Language Arts and Participation in Government & Economics classes. Throughout the unit, the classes met together in Edison’s Makerspace to collaborate on various facets of the project.

Final products will be promoted on social media and submitted to the Rochester Teen Film Festival. The purpose of the festival is to honor the work of urban, suburban, and rural teen filmmakers and give young people an authentic opportunity to participate in a real film festival.