In 1998, Tupac Shakur released his a single Changes. The song is about the rapper’s view of the world as an entertainer and as an African American man in South Los Angeles.
This past weekend, as an Intersections mentor, I used the song to help teach a workshop on cultural identity and broadcast journalism.
Students from the Urban Media Foundation had a discussion about how music, religion, and their cities define who they are as individuals. Using Tupac’s song as an example, we spoke about how he used his success as a rapper to talk about issues in the community such as race and class.
I felt like this related to our broadcast exercise because it allowed the students an opportunity to have an open discussion about how they view themselves and how they view others based on what school they attend, the city they live in and the clothes they wear. By talking about cultural identity, we were able to better understand what stories are important to us and important to our communities.
There were about a dozen students at the Urban Media Foundation workshop—a smaller group because of the SAT—all from different high schools in Los Angeles. In the second half of the session students were taught how to use video cameras for interviewing. They took turns asking questions and created short video clips where they discussed cultural identity.
Posts will be up this week in High School Notebook.
Speak Your Mind