ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the critical pedagogical practices and principles of teaching youth to create documentaries on environmental and climate crises in their communities. This chapter draws on the author's 40 years of experience working with overage and under-credited high school students in after-school workshops at the Educational Video Center (EVC) in New York City. EVC's work integrates inquiry and project-based strategies with critical media literacy and Youth Participatory Action Research. Interviews with former EVC teachers and students spanning three decades give a historical context to this methodology that centers on students’ local neighborhoods, schools, and homes as sites for investigation, media making, and action. They ground these ideas in their experiences teaching and learning to research and document the toxic impact of climate change and environmental degradation in their city. They create documentaries showing the disproportionately high rates of lead poisoning and chronic asthma it causes among low-income communities of color. As examples of Participatory Action Research, these cases illuminate how students learn to use the power of media to educate their peers and family members about the inequitable policies that produce these environmental and public health crises. They also learn to make their voices heard for environmental and climate justice.
