My students listen attentively as Alex Kotlowitz, producer of The Interrupters, speaks to them via Skype.

The morning began as unique as the day unfolded.  My five "moderators" were standing outside, in charge from the beginning.  Two of them handed out note sheets, while the others picked 15 students to have question cue cards.  Once the bell rang, we re-arranged some of the seats so that everyone could be seen, etc by Mr. Kotlowitz.  The Skype call rang in.  I introduced our guests, my moderators, etc, before handing the conversation over to my students.  (Many of the "adults"  stayed in toward the back of the room, actually, putting the kids at the forefront.  Supportive figures included my building principal, assistant principal and many of my colleagues who had planning periods... thanks again for stopping by!   Theresa Shafer (@TheresaShafer), New Tech Network's Online Community Manager, stayed close to the moderators to tweet all of the great Q&A).

Our students started with some polite banter / icebreakers.  My students asked Mr. Kotlowitz about his impressions of the Superbowl ads and who he was cheering for.  My kids got a kick out of the fact that he is human and roots for the Giants, yet they were impressed when he took a stance against the idea of commercials in general.

Once the questions started rolling, the great answers began reinforcing some of the themes of not just our project but also of our school culture/vision.  Here's a bit of a breakdown question-by-question:

-Without having seen The Interrupters  yet, one of the first questions to Kotlowitz was about the documentary's impact on the filmmakers and on the CeaseFire workers themselves.  I saw some students "awakened" when Mr. Kotlowitz said this film was his first time collaborating.  As a writer/journalist, he rarely produced work with others before producing the film.  Being my students' first year in a New Tech school, many of my students were nodding in agreement with how beneficial collaboration was to them, too.  This expert was giving a nod to what we preach every day: collaboration is the way of the workplace and of the world now that we are an interconnected (technologically, socially, culturally, etc) global community.  As for the subjects in the documentary, Kotlowitz has said that some of them found the film therapeutic, because they were able to tell their story, process some of the things they had done (all of the Interrupters have done time), and show how dedicated they are to making better, less violent communities.

-Kotlowitz spoke on how violence is now initiated over more "petty" circumstances.  Here, I saw eyes darting back and forth.  Sophomores have some growing up to do, and we hear that word used all the time in our classes, actually.  Here, whispers and heads shook in disappointment when Kotlowitz said murder/homicide rates have halved over the years, but they are over much more petty disagreements.  Violence used to be so tied to the drug trade, but reports now show most violence starts over looks at girls/guys, unwelcome guests at parties, stepping on someone's shoe, etc

- Kotlowitz mentioned he had done a screening of the film at the Danville prison.  I know caught the interest of some who live close to that area of the city or who go by there.   While so far away, we were still making connections to each other's communities.

My moderators stepped more and more up to the plate as the interview progressed.  When we had mic issues, they politely asked for a moment from Mr. Kotlowitz and set a norm of coming up to the center of the room.  (I was actually surprised at how timid some were in front of him.  Many of my biggest voices asked their assigned questions with as little as a peep... there was definitely a sense of importance in the room.)

Final papers were due yesterday (which I expect will use the interview as a source), but there are already signs that this Skype interview had impact.  When I created a Google Doc to collect thank-you notes and reflections, I found that many of my students were starting to "get" New Tech.  (More on that later.)

Thanks to the power of social media (which set up this interview in the first place!), various great reads  have popped up.  I've collected many of them in my Diigo bookmarks with "interrupters" as the tag.  I have to thank Alex Kotlowitz, the Interrupters social media team (@TheInterrupters), Kartemquin Films (@Kartemquin), and New Tech Network's Theresa Shafter (@newtechnetwork & @TheresaShafer) for much of this great experience, among others whom I've mentioned before.

This is your old, old grandpa.  I've got a copy of all of your previous emails... related to the documentary.  I'm very proud of you...undertaking something like this...getting the idea for something like this at your school.  I wish you a lot of luck with that.  I'm very happy for you... And I hope it turns out very good for you.

It seems like I might be the last of my generation who sees voicemail as still a very valuable way to communicate.  (Texting is definitely taking over.)  But this isn't the case for some wiser than us.  The above message, coming from my grandfather over a couple weeks ago now, was one that I played a few times over and over to keep me motivated through the ups and downs of my efforts to bring something authentic to my classroom.

Since starting the My Bloody Life / gang awareness project this semester, I've been trying to establish a relationship between the documentary team behind The Interrupters and our school.  Thanks to social media and New Tech Network's sizable Twitter presence, we were able to set up a Skype session between Interrupters's producer, Alex Kotlowitz, and our sophomore classroom.

After all is said and done, I have a lot of people to thank before I even begin to write an account of the amazing student engagement and authentic learning I witnessed yesterday.  I'd like to establish my thanks to many people, so that they are not the afterthought.  Our classroom successes yesterday are only due to the support they have given me up and through what will be marked as one of the most important days in a school...A day when I felt the formalwear was no indication of my status or role in the classroom, because I was, indeed, such a learner in a great environment.  The successes to be written about are due in large part to these folks [names withheld as part of my blogging policy] who believe in how valuable unique educational experiences can be.  They are (in no particular order):

• Alex Kotlowitz, who shared a very insightful, 30 minutes' worth of wisdom from his entire career and experience via Skype to a group of students who he had never met before;
• my students, who provide inspiration through their dedication to each other and their community; curiosity for the world; and hard work to solve problems;
• my team-teacher, who knows the adventures we've been through and never backs down from the challenges we didn't plan;
• my New Tech house colleagues, who centers their practice every day on students;
• my in-school mentors, who know how to read and advise my development as a teacher;
• my family, who provided the education and loving home to get me to where I am now;
• my friends, who respect the hours I dedicate to others and our future;
• our tech-support/nerd-out-buddy, who stayed late the night before to ensure everything technologically would work smoothly;
• our assistant principal, who will get anything done for our students and makes time to call to ask, "Do you have anything you need me to do?";
• our building principal, who makes time for his students and makes every effort to support his new teachers;
• our New Tech Network school development coach, who sees student empowerment opportunities in every situation;
• our New Tech Network social media specialist, who set it all up and shared it then with thousands of followers around the world.

May you all know my gratitude, before we celebrate the success.

I announced the this morning that the rumors became reality, and my students definitely kicked their extra efforts into gear.  In particular, five students volunteered (who weren't at risk of falling behind) to help develop interview questions and moderate an interview with Alex Kotlowitz, the producer of The Interrupters and author of the bestseller, There Are No Children Here.

We started by sketching out some roles on the Promethean ActivInspire board.  As project manager, I wanted to see all of my students involved.  I also wanted them to be running the show tomorrow, yet I did not want to see the rest of my class (some 40+ students) left out.  We settled on a plan to provide notecards of questions to up to 15 students (we felt that number of questions was adequate).  We needed a moderator who would set norms for the Skype call, speak for the class during introductions, and then call on students as we proceeded through the interview.  During our preparations today, we needed an expert to research each of the following: Kotlowitz's bio, The Interrupters as a film, and how his expertise or interests could help us answer our driving question.  Of course, we needed a secretary to keep track of the questions and to develop the cue cards, too.

Then, with a particular focus, we reviewed the trailer for the documentary.  Finally, with enough inspiration from the trailer, students were off on their own, using the press kit from The Interrupters website, Kotlowitz's personal webpage, one of Kotlowitz's books, and Wikipedia to build the background knowledge necessary to ask relevant questions that would add to the rigor and relevance of our interview.  The five students tasked with this responsibility were so focused that they were caught off-guard by the bell.  They came to me to arrange to come back after school, when they finished their list of questions AND decided to re-arrange our room to better suit the Skype call.

For many reasons, I'm looking forward to tomorrow.  First, I think my students came up with some really great interview questions.  Next, it's always great to see how my students step up to the plate when there will be other adults to impress beyond the "same old" faces they see every school day of the year.  Tomorrow, our principal, my assistant principal and a New Tech Network representative are expected to stop in to see this discussion in-progress.   A full report and reflections will be issued tomorrow.  Stay tuned!

And all would be normal except for a few small twists.  First, I was standing in the corner taking notes – not in a chair.  So, go ahead and erase all of the “I” statements in that first paragraph.  Then, insert the names [withheld here] of my students.  The proposals, artifacts and research being passed back and forth were not coming from my hands – they were coming from my students’.  Budget drafts and event proposals were the products of their own brainstorming and research.  Yet, the discussion still centered around curriculum, but in this meeting, my students were taking the helm.

See, after watching the trailer for the recently-acclaimed documentary, The Interrupters, students who are ahead on the projects in my classroom are the ones trying to set up a community event to view and discuss the documentary.

The My Bloody Life project

Just after Christmas, I was Tweeting back and forth with some other educators about a gang awareness project that was planned for our sophomore class.  Originally, this project was born out a request by the mayor of our town.  A couple years ago, the mayor wrote a letter to the first New Tech class requesting a PSA that could be broadcast on the public access channel.  For the past two years, students read My Bloody Life by Reymundo Sanchez (a pseudonym for a former Chicago Latin King); spoke with Sanchez via Skype; and then put together their proposed PSA campaigns.

Coming to this already great project, I had decided to do some research of my own on different types of research students could use to model their products around.  I loved the types of products students would produce and the text with which they would anchor their learning and perspective.  I just wanted more access to a 21st century experience -- I wanted to find different types of media.  It was then that I first ran across The Interrupters.

So, how did we get to a point where students are meeting with our school principal in order to organize a school-wide or community viewing of The Interrupters?  When we came back from winter break, my students started our project, driven by the question:

How do we, as students of Danville High School and young citizens, design a public awareness campaign to inform Danville leaders and the general public about the causes and effects of gang activity in our communities?

We hit the ground running with this project by developing norms for discussing such a controversial issue as gangs.  We discussed the intended or unintended consequences of different ways of discussing gangs and their members' actions (particularly because we never know what people are involved in after school).  Students then took a few days to research gang activity in major cities around the world in order to create a gallery of empathy maps around the events they read about in the news.

The Interrupters tweet back to us after New Tech Network facilitates introductions.

Following those preview activities, students started reading My Bloody Life and kept a reading journal built around that driving

question.  My Bloody Life gives a first-hand look at the gangbanger lifestyle.  Some students found the book a quick, easy read, which threw me off for a bit.  (Finished the book early?  Yes!  ...Just one of the benefits of using contemporary texts with narrators about the same age as the readers!)  What could I have them do?  Well, then social media knocked on my door.

The same day that I was scratching my head in the middle of class, shocked that some students read the book in under a week, our New Tech director (my assistant principal) came in to ask me if I had been on Twitter yet today.  No, but I started unlocking my iPhone.  I found that thanks to some tweets picked up by @NewTechNetwork, The Interrupters web team was ready to get introduced to my classroom.  No sooner than I had played the trailer, I had those finished with the book volunteering to use their extra time to help coordinate an event to host a viewing of the documentary with the community and/or even interview some of the Interrupters themselves!

The taskmasters/managers

In the first couple of our advanced group's meetings, we had to establish group roles.  There was a lot to brainstorm and a lot to get moving if this was to be pulled off in time to be useful for the project.  After some discussion and heated debate, I delegated responsibilities under three roles for three different students: Researcher, Event Planner and Curriculum Specialist.  Each role was meant to be unique in its influence in the final decision, but other roles would also have to help support the other.   (So, our Event Planner had to decide who would be invited before the Researcher could get a list of addresses together for invitations.  Also, our Researcher had to watch trailers and read reviews of the movie to help the Curriculum Specialist design our purpose statement.  They both had to dig through our Echo project briefcase and semester curriculum, too.)  Some tasks that needed to be done before presenting the idea to the principal, so a couple of those students worked together on one item over the weekend.

During the meeting, students took turns to propose the different ideas to our principal and also demonstrated that they already had clear knowledge of the destructive nature of thuggish gang-banging.  What they wanted to know was how to see the real solutions to this problem.  One student went into some psychology of why teens are lured to the lifestyle when he said "[Gangs] don't provide the things they need in their lives... but The Interrupters are trying to make change."

Our principal responded quite well to the overall idea.  (He later told me that he was impressed by the three young individuals who were in the hot seats.)  He gave them a few next steps (directly connecting it to the sophomore curriculum) and talked to them about the importance of giving a clear purpose to the event itself (so the community and any press knew what we’re doing this for).  They were clear next steps, but ones that deserve a lot of consideration and attention to detail.  The concerns behind them are certainly real.

With the next steps, students were forced to make considerations for the complex, manipulative world outside of our walls -- one that has somehow glorified a tremendously destructive lifestyle -- one that would love juicy, heedless press spin about schools talking about gangs -- one that takes soundbites and tells a whole story.  Basically, they had to face the intimidating task of covering bases that are moving faster than we can learn about them in just one class.  Speaking of rigor...

Where that leaves us

We are going beyond just looking at the causes and effects of teens getting involved in gangs.  This is a project... a work in progress.  One that is brought to us thanks to social networking, a 21st century tool unimaginable decades ago.  We are driven by what we want to know and where we can find solutions to the problems our world faces.  Without a doubt, this may be the most exciting learning that I am facilitating so far in my career.  And I think the most important part about this learning is that it is memorable to my learners and allows them to make an impression on our school and community.