A School Development Team's Video Postcard

Previously, they might have mailed parents a Thank You postcard.

But after The Development Team at The Hamlin School partnered with Stories Matter Media, they were able to present parents who had helped raise millions of dollars for the school with something they had never seen before -- a video thanking them for their generous contributions and support.

This video shows that all messaging once considered the exclusive domain of the printed word, can now be expressed through video. And, when done right, with even greater impact.

A Small Sample Goes A long Way

Fania Davis knew she had a story.

Actually, the director and co-founder of Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth Director can name hundreds of students in Oakland public schools whose downward spirals her organization is credited with turning around. And thanks to a recent study measuring RJOY's progress, Davis now has the stats to prove her organization is a powerful tool for preventing violence in one of the world's most crime-ridden cities and improving academic standards in its schools.

RJOY hired Stories Matter Media to make the case for RJOY, which according to its mission, seeks to "fundamentally shift the way we respond to youthful wrongdoing from punitive approaches that inflict more harm to restorative approaches that repair it."

We took a small sampling of success stories -- two students; Jasmine King, a wannabe gang-banger in middle school and Eric Myles, a high-schooler who never thought he'd survive adolescence. The reshaping of their lives through restorative justice puts a pair of human faces on the statistics: an 82 percent drop in suspensions, zero expulsions, a dramatic uptick in test scores, and perfect teacher retention, while restorative justice was implemented.

Davis has already presented the video in an appeal for donations at the Rotary Club. She has begun circulating the video online to raise funds and to educate the public about RJOY. She will also be able to embed the video on RJOY's site and link the video in grant applications.

After we produced a micro-documentary for New America Media on Restorative Justice in Oakland, which ran March 24, Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth hired Stories Matter Media to produce an informational video on how the alternative model is being applied in Alameda County's juvenile courts and schools across Oakland.

Shoots are complete. Editing is already underway. Stay tuned to our blog to see the final video!

Micro-Documentary: Expelling Expulsion

Can Restorative Justice Save Struggling Oakland Schools?


Two decades after schools across the United States stepped up expulsions and began doubling suspensions, so-called “zero tolerance” policies have failed to make good on a promise to stem misbehavior and reduce violence in schools, according to researchers at UC Berkeley School of Law. But research into alternative policies is virtually non-existent.

Pacific News Service hired Stories Matter Media producer Cassidy Friedman to cover the ongoing battle Oakland is waging to usher in an alternative discipline model called Restorative Justice.

Hamlin Student Wins NASA Space Contest

You may have noticed there's a lot of winning cropping up in this blog. That says a lot about the quality of education at The Hamlin School, which I produced both this video, and one lower down the page, for. But I suspect there are many, many stories like this going unnoticed.

Too few reporters are on the street. And not enough schools are hiring journalists to dig up their stories.

Here's a tidbit from NASA for any science wonks who might be interested in the particulars of the contest:

"Kids in Micro-g" is a student experiment design challenge geared toward grades 5-8. Its purpose is to give students a hands-on opportunity to design an experiment or simple demonstration that could be performed both in the classroom and aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

The winning experiments will have observably different results when the experiments are performed in the "1-gravity" or "1-g" environment of the classroom, compared to when the experiments are performed by Astronauts in the "Micro-g" environment (one-millionth of 1-g) environment of the ISS. The apparatus for the demonstration must be constructed using materials from a materials tool kit provided to the astronauts on board the ISS. The tool kit consists of materials commonly found in the classroom and used for science demonstrations.

The experiment demonstration must take no more than 30 minutes to set up, run and take down.

Experiment proposals should be limited to no more than 7 pages in length in either Microsoft Word or PowerPoint format or a Word or PowerPoint file converted to PDF format. A font size of no smaller than 11 point (the size of this type) should be used. Hardcopy experiment proposals submitted by postal mail should provide text and graphics on one side only, for a submission length of no more than 7 total sheets. All experiment proposals should include photographic documentation of the proposed experiment in its fully set up configuration, as part of the 7 page total document length.

The following details must be contained in the experiment proposal:
1) Subject of the experimental investigation
2) Hypothesis of the expected outcome in the classroom and onboard the International Space Station (ISS)
3) StepbyStep experiment procedure, to be written for use by the ISS Astronauts. The procedure must include the following information:
a. Experiment assembly and set up instructions (only using items from the Kids In Microg materials list)
b. Instructions for running the experiment
c. Instructions for experiment take down
d. Instructions for data gathering and recording during the experiment run
e. Instructions for data analysis
4) Conclusions:
a. Observed from experiment runs in the class room
b. Expected results from the experiment when conducted onboard the ISS
5) Observed inclassroom time for actual experiment setup, experiment run and experiment take down,
using the exact stepbystep procedures provided in 3) above.
6) References used for experiment development

Hamlin Student Wins San Francisco Film Festival Essay Contest

When Ciara's English teacher, Rose Helm, first began coaching Ciara's writing two years ago, she immediately recognized a scion scribe.

What neither knew was how profoundly Ciara's writing would influence an outside audience. Ciara not only won this year's San Francisco Film Society's essay contest. She deeply moved all three judges and became a role model for students across the Bay Area by donating her $300 Grand Prize reward to charity.

Gateway High School: Lisa' Story

This piece I recently produced for Gateway High School, a school that graduates nearly all of its students -- many of whom are from families that fall below the poverty line, many of whom have learning disabilities.

Lisa Geronimo, Class '11, explains how teachers at Gateway High School drew her into leadership roles, forcing her to cultivate strengths neither she nor her family knew she had.

Produced by Cassidy Friedman at Stories Matter Media.

Self-Reflection for Conflict Professionals Intensive (SCPI)

When the most heated moments a conflict professional deals with arise-- when everyone in the room is yelling, crying and engaged in emotional warfare -- what is the conflict professional feeling?

Conventional wisdom is: "It doesn't matter; the mediator is there to do a job; not to get emotionally involved in THEIR (and NOT his or her) dispute."

But, according to the Center for Understanding in Conflict, which is at the cutting edge of developing self-reflection practices for conflict professionals, acknowledging one's own emotional reactions is essential to being a good mediator.

I produced this video, which documents a class the Center has been teaching conflict professionals, which addresses methods for working with their emotional responses to benefit the clients ... and to save their own sanity.



Feedback From SCPI Participants:

"What beautiful and genuine inspiration! "

Suzan Barrie Aiken
Collaborative Attorney and Mediator

"It is really incredible. It is wonderful and beautiful. I feel incredibly fortunate to be with you in SCPI and I realize how much I miss our time together."

Caryn Espo

"Wow - the video is amazing!"

Catherine Conner
Mediator/Collaborative Attorney

"I love how powerful the video is for communicating what SCIPI is about and I'm awed by Cassidy's talent in pulling it all together!!!"

Marissa Wertheimer
Mediator, Trainer

"Inspiring! My thanks to all of you for this unique and meaningful experience."

Judy Barber
Family Mediator
Family Money Consultants, LLC

"Brilliant...Cassidy did a fantastic job of capturing the essence of SCIPI."

Peter Renkow
Mediator

2010: THE CASE TO SUPPORT GATEWAY HIGH SCHOOL

This is a video I recently produced for Gateway High School, a tuition-free public charter school that last year sent nearly 100 percent of its graduating students on to college.

According to the school, "By combining a rigorous curriculum with the personal support possible in small classes, Gateway enables each student to capitalize on his or her unique talents and capabilities."

Marin's Organic Farms Wilt Under Labor Laws

By Cassidy Friedman
For Bay Citizen

As a teenager, Dave Retsky was just about the last kid an organic farmer would want to hire. The son of a Hollywood doctor, Retsky admits he was a tad lazy and knew next to nothing about organic farming before he began his first internship. Now he owns County Line Harvest, one of the top organic farms in Petaluma, in Sonoma County.

“Where else was I going to learn the trade but as an apprentice?” said Retsky.

“You’ve got no skills. You’ve got no work ethic. Now I own a farm, and those experiences I had were invaluable.”

Retsky’s own enterprise has been aided by intern labor, as have about half of Marin’s 56 organic farms. Every year, interns weed, hand-wash and sell their produce at farmers markets. Such unpaid and work-trade programs have fueled the organics movement since the Bay Area’s first certified organic farms sprung up in the 1970s in Bolinas.

But this spring, state labor inspectors stumbled upon the internships and determined that they violate state and federal labor law. Organic farming internships dried up, with disastrous consequences for farmers like Retsky and would-be farmers working for them.

Marin County’s organic farms are grappling with the new order. Internships must meet a six-point test that has been in place since the 1938 federal Fair Labor Standards Act. Farm interns must be supervised by an accredited school and cannot displace a regular employee. The internship must also benefit the student more than the employer.

Until now, state inspectors hadn’t scrutinized farming internships in the North Bay, but they carried out a high-profile action in Pescadero in 2008. An inspector tagged Blue House Organic Farm, which had three interns, with 14 violations of minimum wage and insurance laws. But they did not identify them as part of an internship program.

Then they did a routine inspection of County Line this past February. Although it did not cite the internship program, it rattled farmers. Local farmers say it may be the first time labor inspectors targeted agriculture in the North Bay.

“I think that Marin County for the most part has been the beneficiary of being tucked away in an unobtrusive part of the state,” said Carl Borden, associate counsel for the California Farm Bureau Federation. “I’ve done many, many seminars for conventional growers, and this has never been an issue. The people who work for larger farms, their workers expected to get paid.”

“I was really surprised,” said Eric Rood, of the Department of Labor Standards Enforcement. “None of that was even on our radar until that week.”

Farmers demanded clarification of the law at an April 1 meeting with the state, which Rood attended. Although the labor inspectors had conducted extensive educational outreach throughout the state to warn other industries about illegal internships, the meeting marked the first time both state labor officials and organic farmers openly discussed internships on farms.

“We can’t afford to make a living producing these commodities unless we use this type of labor,” one farmer told Borden. “If I had to pay these people, I’d be out of business,” another said.

Marin’s organic farming economy suddenly seemed less sustainable. Farmers deleted internship postings. Interns were hired on the books or dismissed, and applicants were turned away. At smaller farms, spouses hopped on tractors. Retsky closed his Marin Farmers Market stand, which interns had run.

The boom in illegal internships parallels the exploding organics movement. One web site lists organic farming internships at 1,667 farms and attracts 10,000 visitors yearly. States with large organic farming sectors, including New York and Washington, are rethinking labor laws that many consider outdated. California may be the latest to come to the table.

“There’s probably not a program that can have an apprenticeship relationship replace labor,” said David Lewis, who directs the UC Cooperative Extension in Marin. “But there should be some sort of situation where we can grow the next farmer. That’s what has taken the biggest hit. It’s the opportunity for these folks to really make it work on a small scale (and) to teach the next generation of farmers.”