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WKCD: So tell me more about this project. How did it go?

It was a real struggle to get the girls to finish it, because they encountered so many difficulties managing their time. They were taking exams and finishing a lot of their responsibilities with internships, plus applying for college and scholarships. They just ended up having a lot on their plate that I wasn’t really prepared for.

Once they actually finished it, it inspired a lot of conversation. They ended up showing it on the day of graduation. They were so thrilled, so proud of it, and it was fantastic. It wasn’t as edited as any of us wanted it to be, but it actually came out perfectly well for what it was meant for, which was to create conversation among the community.
The girls are doing so well—Amina took so many College Now classes when she was in high school that this is her first year in college and she’s a sophomore. She came back to visit school and she said “Hey, guess what? I’m a sophomore now!”

WKCD: Were the students featured all students at Bronx International High School?

Yes, they were all present or former Bronx International students. For example, the girl they followed around who was in the kitchen was actually a dropout.

WKCD: How old was she?

I don’t really know. When she was at school, she was one of my students, and she was a different age in reality than what she was on paper—I think she was in her 20s then, but she was officially 17 or 18. A lot of the girls do that because they want to take advantage of the free education, and they don’t want to seem as old as they really are.

WKCD: In the focus groups in the video, the students talk so freely—was it hard to make these conversations happen, or did they flow like water?

Actually, I wasn’t present for all the focus groups—I just checked in with them. But the conversations were heated. I mean, they were loud and they were boisterous. The girls generally know each other, they’re already a community, but when they talk about issues like that, it’s very personal for them and they get very loud. So it was a safe environment for them, but it was also something they couldn’t wait to talk about. They just loved the meetings, and it wasn’t necessarily difficult to get them to be honest—it was more difficult to get them to have a conversation and listen to each other.

WKCD: There were certainly strong points of view—the push and pull was dramatic.

It’s usual that at the school the African community will come together around specific issues that are happening. They socialize with each other just because kids tend to do that, but it’s not unusual for a group of African students to be formally engaged in a conversation about a recent political uprising, or the news, or whatever is happening with their families. So I think it’s something they’re actually getting used to and really appreciating. I don’t think that’s true for most groups.

WKCD: Does the pregnancy issue play out differently for African versus Latino students?

I don’t know—it’s a good question, and I know it was something they were talking about among themselves. It seems to me that there are very few girls who can get pregnant and maintain their education. There are some; I have a student right now who is taking care of her baby, but she is a real anomaly. And some other students got pregnant and dropped out of school, and they’ve recently come back, so it sometimes is a different timeframe for them.

WKCD: It was clear that these girls were not talking about getting pregnant by accident but by family expectations.

Maybe that is the main difference between the cultures—the Latino girls tend to get pregnant by accident, the African girls by design.

It’s definitely a difficult transition for them, and probably more so for the African boys than for the girls. Actually, the African boys at school experience a whole new identity questioning, because they’re not African-American males in this country, they’re African males, and there’s no real niche for them officially in the Bronx. I think it might be a harder question for the boys than the girls.

WKCD: When it comes to dropping out, is it the African girls who drop out more?

I think it is, yes—but as you said, it’s mainly because they are starting families.

WKCD: How does the African tradition of arranged marriages figure in?

For these students, it’s definitely an understood part of their culture, a norm. The girls at school—some of them are married and some are not, and some of them are feeling a lot of pressure from home to get married as quickly as possible and sometimes to not complete school.

WKCD: So you have students at school that are married?

Yes. But the funny thing is, if you walked into school you wouldn’t know. You wouldn’t necessarily see them as more mature or as different. They hang out with their friends—they’re just married.

WKCD: Married to older men?

Sometimes, but not all the time. It’s more like something teachers notice when it’s time to make appointments for parent conferences and they realize that the person coming in is not a parent, it’s a husband.

WKCD: Are these generally arranged marriages?

I don’t know. I do know girls who have chosen their husbands, and I also know girls who have had arranged marriages, so I really don’t know what’s more prevalent. It’s a very different dynamic—in a way, it makes the person more whole. As a teacher you realize that this person is studying to get an education, but there’s a whole lot more going on.

WKCD: It’s amazing they are in school when they’re married. It seems like marriage would lock them into a different path.

I had a couple of long conversations last year with girls who graduated, realizing that this was going to be the end of their education. It was a really difficult time for them, because they didn’t want to leave an academic community. But that was going to be it—it was going to be the kids and the home for the rest of their lives. And that’s difficult when you have kids who really struggled through school, and they finished it, and they graduated—and everybody talks about college, and for them it’s not a real possibility sometimes.

WKCD: Shifting gears, tell me how the two students learn their video skills?

They both took video workshops at EVC (Educational Video Center). The folks there were incredibly helpful—they had worked with Amina on an internship. And  Miriam had been working with Children’s Press Line, so they’d had some previous experience with video. When it came to the editing and figuring out what to put in, though, it was learning by doing.

WKCD: Did the student videographers write a storyboard that they then shot, or did the video take unexpected turns?

They made a very elaborate plan from the beginning, and then it didn’t turn out the way they had expected. I think part of the challenge was that it was really difficult to get one-on-one interviews. They had plans to do one-on-one interviews with a lot more girls. But the scheduling was difficult—you’re talking about teenagers who have children and have house responsibilities in addition to school. It was just very difficult for them to manage to have the video equipment and the person and the time when they weren’t in class to actually do it. That changed the storyboard, obviously.

WKCD: So the focus groups became vital?

Yes, that’s why the focus groups became a lot more important. It was something they could do in school—plus, they had a lot of different opinions in the same room, which made it easier for them.

WKCD: Also, as you say, the conversation was so animated that it was like having individual interviews.

It helps that the kids felt really comfortable in the school community. They said a lot of things that they may not have wanted to say in public, but they weren’t really aware that it was public. There was a lot of controversy before the girls decided to play it at graduation. Their friends all said, “You can’t show that, I don’t want everyone to see this.” They had to go around and remind people individually, “You signed a consent form, you knew we were making a video, you knew you were being filmed, and we want to show off our work.”

WKCD: Were there any repercussions?

Yes, there were a lot of arguments. They’re young, so friends can come and go in 20 minutes and then they’ll come back—but there were a lot of fights about the public display of that. I tried to stand by the girls as much as possible and tell them that if they really didn’t want to do it, and they didn’t want to put their friends in a difficult position, then they didn’t have to. But they wanted to, and they had worked hard on it, and they had to work harder on it in the last two months or so than they had the whole time—because they were so excited about it.

WKCD: I can see this video being a great tool in a variety of places—not just with African students. Giving it a space to happen in schools—I think it would be a great discussion.

I also think that it has a real place for students to use it as a model—just to find different ways to expose what is going on in their communities.  As a history teacher, I’m planning on using it as an example of one type of project that kids can do. At some point they’re going to be working on how to engage their community in problems, and I think that that’s an excellent model because it’s an interesting topic and an interesting film, and it’s short. So even though it’s not perfect, it’s a good way to spark discussion.

WKCD: Also, the roughness helps to make it appeal to the younger people, as opposed to it being a really polished adult film. It makes all the difference in feeling so authentic. The last thing teens want is people who haven’t walked in their shoes. The polished version loses immediacy. I thought it was great—I’ve seen a lot rougher, believe me.
Anything else I should know?

I think you touched on all the main positive points of the film, and I think that once you get in touch with the two girls they’ll have a lot more to add. The funny thing is that they were miserable completing it, but I’m sure they don’t remember it that way. They’re going to say that it was so fantastic—I’m so glad to get it finished, everybody loved it, and so on.

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