Teens Triumph Over Trauma Through Video

by Allan Appel | June 2, 2009 3:39 PM | | Comments (2)

The turning point for Macie Barrow came when her cousin, who had decided to leave the drug life, was killed before he could turn the corner.

Macie’s mom was using drugs. She knew people both murdered and jailed.

No wonder she was getting into fights at Hillhouse High, where she’s in 11th grade. Then came the murder of her cousin, a year ago this month. That was her red-letter moment.

“I decided I wanted to be different,” Macie said. This different: She plans to become a lawyer or a pediatrician or own her own business.

nhinewhorizons%20003.JPGMacie (pictured) was one of more than a dozen kids, all students at the city’s New Horizons High School, who told their stories of hope triumphing over trauma. Some were going public before their peers for the first time.

What enabled them to do it was the caring attention, love, and, yes, some fancy technology from Ras Mo Moses (pictured with Macie) and his colleagues at Youth Rights Media.

They celebrated their work the other day with the students with a screening of the kids’ digital stories at the city’s transitional high school on Gold Street in the Hill.

Click on the play arrow at the top of this story to watch Macie’s piece.

One of the striking images in Thalia Rivera’s “Keep Your Head Up” is a red suitcase, packed, yet unzipped and open. It’s unclear from the image if the user of the bag is arriving or departing. It’s an apt image for Thalia, a 16-year old at New Horizons. She has spent five years in foster care.

Click on the play arrow to watch her story.

“In my house,” she said after the screening of her short film, “there were drugs, and abuse. My parents couldn’t take care of me. And then my grandmother who did, well, it was too much for her.”

nhinewhorizons%20006.JPGThalia said she was afraid initially to put her story on film in front of the public. “I was afraid I was going to be judged,” she said. Her best friend at school, Ann Morales, another of the filmmakers, urged her to.

After the screening of Thalia’s movie, applause followed, and she was glad she’d decided to go ahead. She wants to be a construction worker when she finishes high school. She also loves volleyball, a game in which she is a setter. “The only time at Hillhouse that I kept my grades up,” she said, “was when I had to in order to stay on the volleyball team.”

nhinewhorizons%20007.JPGDaizhon Armstrong (at left in photo) and Asia Davis (next to him) were two other filmmakers. Although Daizhon finished his film, he chose not to have it screened publicly. “Everyone knows me already,” he said. Daizhon’s biggest challenge in life, he said, is “being there for my daughter. She’s 2 years old. And I have to be there and earn money for her.”

He plans to become an electrician, he said, which brings in a good living.

Asia Davis’s film, titled “Yes, We Can Change,” like many of the autobiographically themed works, began with a photo of herself as a baby. Also in keeping with a trope in the kids’ films, innocence soon turns into quickly mentioned traumatic experiences. “My mother abandoned me,” she narrates, “when I was very little, when I needed her most. I was also sexually abused by a man when I was 14.”

Asia’s film, too, ends on a positive note: Past does not determine the future; change is possible. “I’m really good with computers,” she said, and that will be her vocational direction.

Challenging A School Stereotype

Beyond therapy, the movies’ collective point is to alter stereotypes of kids who go to New Horizons. New Horizons has about 100 students, all of whom have had academic or behavioral problems in traditional high schools.

New Horizons has a required social development course. It’s in connection with this course that Youth Rights Media has come in for two one-hour sessions every week of the semester.

nhinewhorizons%20005.JPGAnother of the filmmakers, Shana Grayson, spoke to that point in her remarks: “Some students here do get pregnant, but don’t stop coming to school. Some keep on working hard to get their credits and don’t get noticed … Some people think students here are violent and don’t want to learn. That might be the case for some, but everyone who goes here wants to be successful.”

She went on to say: “People expect us to go down an unsuccessful road. But this is where our digital stories come in and they change everything, because you get to see another side of who we are.”

nhinewhorizons%20004.JPGIndeed. Macie Barrows’ movie opens with pictures of pizza. We learn what she loves to eat. Then there are family pictures of her four sisters, four brothers, and her two best friends, including Annette Crenshaw (pictured). She goes on to show us a pair of handcuffs and a drug bust. “I hate what my mother is doing with her life,” the narrator says, “but still I love her.”

Then we see other somber images of tombstones in a cemetery. The film ends thanking Youth Rights Media for its work. There’s also a proud image of President Obama.

According to YRM Director Laura McCargar, the organization hopes to work with another group of kids when New Horizons moves into the MicroSociety School Building on Hallock Street next year.







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Comments

Posted by: Coolidge | June 2, 2009 6:32 PM

Outstanding, moving article. Mayor John, Dr. Mayo how, I ask HOW to you sleep at night, look at more than a decade of damage you've done to our youth.

Posted by: Gomo George | June 4, 2009 10:27 AM

Hey Ras,
this is truly inspirational. Thanks so much for sharing the links. Be well Bro congratulations to the young people ti is takes true courage to challenge the negatives and realise our positive selves. One love and Jah Bless

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