Listen to Latino teens tell their families’ stories.

8 minutes

 

30 minutes

This project was sponsored by youTHINK, an innovative education program of the Zimmer Children’s Museum that uses the power of art to foster critical thinking, engage diverse learners, promote literacy and serve as a tool for social change. Find out more.

In a series of media literacy and oral history workshops, teens learned how to gather and record their families’ stories for radio broadcast.

The project aimed to connect the personal and family stories of youth to the larger, public history of Los Angeles and the region. Over the course of six sessions, the young people were introduced to the fields of oral history and ethnography, learned interviewing and technical skills, and how to prepare presentations for recording. As the youth gathered their families' stories, they were able to explore the commonalities and differences between their stories and those of other youth in the project and between their stories and diverse migration stories of the past. The outcome is an emotional account of the immigration experiences of their families.

“William Deverell, director of the Huntington-USC Institute on the California West, provided students with background on the history of Los Angeles, and helped the students put their own families’ stories into the context of the history of immigration to the Los Angeles area.”

“For many students, it was a breakthrough to talk with their peers and with the broader community about their families’ stories. So many of these stories are not told; sometimes they are buried, or deemed unimportant or irrelevant to their lives today. This project helped students feel more motivated to learn these stories, and more confident sharing them with others.”

Shifra Teitelbaum
Project Director