University Students

BYU Students participating in Hands on a Camera teach media literacy skills in a service learning model. The stories they help K12 students tell are focused around community narratives.

Through the service learning process the university students learn to re-frame relations of power in the classroom—they learn that they are simulataneously teachers and learners.

In a setting like high school where most kids don’t get a chance to express their opinion and views that often, these kids are able to point the camera where they want to point it, ask questions they want to ask, and piece the information together in ways they want to. The final product is entirely up to them. I hope that this will influence the way they are able to interact with people. Through documentary we can see that people we might not pay any attention to have something to say (this is including the filmmakers and their subjects). This exposure to documentary and the process of making a documentary might help them to see the people around them differently.

—Whitney Borup

Service-learning challenges our static notions of teaching and learning, decenters our claim to the labels of “students” and “teachers” and exposes and explores the linkages between power, knowledge, and identity.

—Dan W. Butin