Alan Cheng

“New York City's Affinity Schools District is partnering with EVC to pilot Credible Teachers (CT), which will equip educators with the knowledge, skills, cultural competencies, and confidence to engage BIPOC students in an SEL-rich environment grounded in project-based media-arts. Four teachers (one per semester) in two public high schools, City-As-School and James Baldwin, will learn how to build an SEL classroom environment that is student-led, culturally responsive, and grounded in social justice. Students will be supported to take the lead to collaboratively produce powerful documentary films that connect their learning to their lives, their creativity to community change, and their healing to developing agency to disrupt narratives and systems that harm them. CT, piloted for the first time during this grant period, is part of an initiative to significantly retool and evolve EVC's celebrated 37-year-old Professional Development Program. CT aims to assist BIPOC teachers with lived experiences that reflect the students they teach in implementing transformative SEL environments for BIPOC youth, both to improve youth outcomes and diversify the teacher population. Furthermore, CT media coaches (teacher trainers) will also be credible messengers, including EVC program alums. CT will equip teachers with the ability to help students heal from trauma, nurture the whole youth, and create an interactive and safe space that fosters a culture of joyful and rigorous collaborative learning. The original curriculum builds developmental capacities across four key areas: documentary arts, critical literacy, social emotional learning, and civic engagement. CT will be a model that can be replicated broadly.”