Media Monday: For the pirate, the paleontologist, or the pianist in your girl—Magazines that empower

You may have seen some recent stories making the rounds on Facebook about the one-dimensional offerings in Girls’ Life vs. Boys’ Life magazines. And you may also have caught a mention here and there of Kazoo, a brand-new magazine for girls ages 5 to 10 that explicitly takes a feminist stance. Kazoo encourages girls to “make some noise” and features stories about science, exploration, sports, and other topics to engage young minds. There are no advertorials about fancy hairstyles or makeup here. Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls website—a fountain of pro-girl information, says Kazoo is required reading, and I agree. The latest issue, focused on nature and the great outdoors, looks like it will be out in mid-October.

Kazoo is a labor of motherly love, created by Erin Bried and funded by a record-breaking Kickstarter campaign. Bried just couldn’t find any magazines her daughter liked at the newsstand. “Every single title on the rack sends the message that there’s only one right way for a girl to look, dress, and act, and it’s usually like a princess. My daughter happens to prefer pirates, so we left empty-handed.”

Currently, Kazoo is only available in print and only published four times a year, at a fairly pricey $12.50 per issue or $50 per year.  But it’s possible the number of issues will go up, and the price will come down a little as it gets more established. I only wish Bried’s team would launch a companion magazine for girls ages 11 to 16, since we all know that those are the years when girls tend to lose their confidence and assertiveness, often retreating from their interest in pirates. You can follow Kazoo on Facebook to find out the latest info.

Seeing Kazoo and the great welcome it seems to have received among parents and the press inspired me to look around a little for other magazines for girls—and also by girls and boys. Here are a few I found that are worth looking at with your kids:

Shameless is a Canadian teen magazine aimed at girls and also trans youth. The topics tend toward culture and politics, and each issue usually includes profiles of cool women, a little sports, crafts, tech, and other on-trend topics. Unfortunately, it only comes out three times a year and is rare in U.S. bookstores, but the great thing is that you can download full issues from their site at only $5 each. The blog that goes with the magazine offers tons of unique articles, and the diversity of the bloggers is a major plus. Definitely worth a look if your kid likes music, the arts, politics, and Canadians—well, who doesn’t like Canadians? And they take art and story pitches from readers!

New Moon Girls is by and for girls ages 9 to 16 and has been around since the 1990s. The magazine takes a community focus, with an online component that connects girls and offers intellectual and emotional support during the tough tween and teen years. The magazine features an amazing variety of stories looking at girls’ lives worldwide, fiction, health, crafts, careers, science—and actively encourages submissions from young writers. It’s published six times a year, with a $40 subscription.

I also ran across an online news site called Teen Voices, which is an offshoot of the nonprofit Women’s eNews. Apparently, there used to be a print version, but it doesn’t seem to be published anymore. This site offers an opportunity for teen girls to write and report on stories they are passionate about and has an expansive global vision.

For girls and boys:

You’re probably familiar with the Cricket media empire for kids—they produce high-quality educational magazines for all ages. One I was not familiar with, but which is focused on the sciences, with a little history and archaeology thrown in for good measure sometimes, is MUSE, for kids ages 9 to 14. They offer a sample issue to check out with your kids and publish nine issues a year, with reasonably priced print and digital subscriptions.

And there’s a great Texas-based magazine, Creative Kids, for ages 8 to16, that includes art, essays, and stories submitted by kids and for kids. It’s a quarterly paper magazine, but there is a limited online version and a blog. I love the way this one encourages young writers and artists and takes them seriously as creators.

I’d like to do a full blog post soon about the wealth of opportunities out there for kids to publish their fiction and artwork, so please let me know if there are print or online magazine that you recommend!

 
Shelley Sperry

Media Monday: Brighten and enlighten your mind with videos from KQED

In these final days of summer vacation, here’s a quick Media Monday recommendation from the Left Coast: some websites from KQED, an NPR and PBS affiliate in northern California. I’m recommending their KQED Education site, and in particular the new KQED Teach site. I’m also recommending the KQED Art School site. These sites, with most of their materials also available on YouTube, are just overflowing with intriguing videos aimed at both educators and students. Watch out—once you and your kids start exploring, you may find yourselves awash in video goodness from which there’s no escape!

KQED Education on YouTube and online has a lot of helpful information on art, politics, race, science, and media. Every time I look at it I find something pretty cool that I want to share with my daughter.

New this summer: a separate site called KQED Teach that has online, self-paced courses to help educators develop media literacy. I think many of the lessons would be useful for middle and high school students who want to create innovative multi-media projects, but the assumption when you sign up is that you’re an educator, not a student.  The courses are designed to help participants:

• participate in online communities
• learn to decipher and manipulate digital imagery
• gain competence in making and sharing original media

Courses are free, and the introductory material for each module is available on YouTube, as well as through the KQED website. But you can’t fully participate in the learning without signing up and logging in.

KQED Art School has an inspiring number and variety of videos for kids—and many made by kids. In the videos, you can find how-tos related to the arts, interviews with adult and young artists, and a lot more. The arts represented include painting, animation, photography, dance, fashion, sound recording, ceramics, puppetry, printmaking, quilting, political activism through art, and more. I really cannot get enough of these videos, most of which are 5–8 minutes long. Here are a few recent examples to brighten and enlighten:
 

Shelley Sperry

Media Monday: Making history—Guns on UT's campus, 1966 & 2016

Photo by Larry D. Moore [CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons

As many Austinites are aware, today marks the 50th anniversary of one of our city’s most tragic events—the sniper attack on UT’s campus that many historians consider the nation’s first modern-day mass shooting. Student and ex-Marine Charles Whitman killed his wife and mother before climbing the infamous UT clock tower with rifles and pistols to gun down almost 50 more people before police managed to stop him. In all, Austin lost 17 lives as a result, including Whitman’s.

In the five decades since, as the Washington Post notes in its remembrance of that bloody day, “The killing spree introduced the nation to the concept of a ‘mass shooting’ outside the context of a military battlefield,” and now that concept is so commonplace that we can barely mourn one loss of life before another intrudes to take its place on our TV screens. Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Orlando, Houston—the list is long and growing longer.

Today, as a bell tolled and the tower clock stopped, UT President Gregory Fenves spoke to honor the anniversary and the lives lost—and to dedicate a new memorial. Two UT student body presidents, from 2016–2017 and 1966–1967, read the names of the fallen.
 

Several projects capture interviews, data, and powerful video and 3D recreations about the UT shootings. These offer a helpful jumping off point for discussions in the classroom and at home about the psychology and politics of mass shootings.

• The Austin American Statesman’s tower shooting site is comprehensive, and includes coverage of today’s memorial ceremony and the campus carry controversy.
• On the 40th anniversary, in 2006, Texas Monthly writer Pamela Colloff produced “96 Minutes,” a collection of first-person accounts of the events that is still a powerful document. Colloff has also written recent articles about the new memorial and about one of the survivors, Claire Wilson. The magazine collects its reporting on the UT tower shooting in one spot here.
• And in “Out of the Blue,” Texas Standard and the Briscoe Center for American History have produced a vast interactive site with stories, think pieces, and video and audio interviews.

Today is also the day that Texas joins a handful of states that allow guns on college campuses. Many advocates argue that if good citizens on the UT campus had had their weapons available in 1966, the carnage could have been minimized. Data from the FBI indicates that from 2000 to 2013 at least 21 of 160 active shooters were stopped by civilians without guns; one was stopped by an armed civilian.

What are the parameters of the new campus rules in Austin? In a nutshell:

• Anyone who currently holds a Texas license for a handgun may carry it on the UT campus, but must keep it holstered and out of sight.
• Faculty may declare offices gun-free.
• Guns are not allowed where students sleep, but they are allowed in dining and lounge areas of dorms.
• Guns are not allowed at sports events.

Details of all the campus carry regulations in Texas are tracked by the Dallas News and updated regularly on the Campus Carry Tracker.
 

Shelley Sperry
 

Media Monday: Writers explore the transformation of America’s public schools

We’re always so pleased when we can highlight a public school with an alt ed soul. Last week Dawn Johnson wrote about Cunningham Elementary as a visionary public school in South Austin on our blog, and it’s a terrific, inspiring read. Recognizing that public schools across the country are in a period of new challenges and changes, Slate magazine is featuring a five-part series, “Tomorrow’s Test,” right now that’s also a must-read. The series is produced in cooperation with the Columbia Journalism School’s Teacher Project.

The focus of the series is one that’s not news to anyone interested in education in Texas, California, or other parts of the country that have seen many new immigrants in the past couple of decades. Changing demographics have a wide range of consequences for our public schools. As writer Sarah Carr explains in the series introduction:

Over the last 20 years, the number of Hispanic public schoolchildren has more than doubled, and the number of Asians has swelled by 56 percent. The number of black students and American Indians grew far more modestly—but the number of white students fell by about 15 percent.

The majority-minority milestone has arrived in our public schools early—a consequence of white children’s overrepresentation in private schools and the relative youth of America’s black and Hispanic populations. It is not a fluke. It is a preview of a transforming country. 

One of the things Carr points out that we may not think much about is the lack of diversity among our public school teachers and how that can sometimes affect their ability to connect with and mentor students of color and students from less affluent backgrounds. At a time when half our public school students are students of color, more than half are low-income, and almost a quarter are foreign-born or have a foreign-born parent, about 80 percent of our teachers are white.

This week, the Tomorrow’s Test series will visit 11 schools across the country, starting in Alaska and New Orleans. The articles will look at questions of diversity, immigration, segregation, and poverty, and will chronicle kids, families, and schools all looking for better education alternatives in this time of change.

Let us know if you’re reading the series and what you find inspiring, surprising, and relevant to our schools in Austin.

Shelley Sperry

Media Monday: Listen up! Pop culture podcasts for kids

I woke up too early this morning—not to exercise or meditate, but so I could tune in to a couple of podcasts about my pop culture obsessions before work. While firing up the coffee maker and thinking about topics for Media Monday, I wondered whether there might be some good pop culture podcasts for kids and teens that would be worth recommending. 

I soon discovered what Stephanie Hayes wrote about a few weeks ago in “Where Are All the Kidcasts?” in The Atlantic: there just aren’t enough great podcasts for kids. This, despite the fact that “studies have found that children between the ages of seven and thirteen respond more creatively to radio stories than to stories shown on television.”

A few hours down the rabbit hole led me to an interesting site called Pop Culture Classroom  that aims to foster literacy, learning, diversity, and community through the pop culture—especially comics and graphic novels—kids love. The site aggregates a LOT of news about comic cons, but in addition, the founders work with teachers to create curricula around the art and stories in comics. Unfortunately, their podcast, Kids on Comics, which featured a father and son riffing on the books and movies they love, only lasted for two years. Still, it’s well worth checking out the extensive archive on everything from Star Wars to Naruto.

For me, the value of a pop culture podcast is the “deep dive” into minutiae and speculation about stories and characters. For that kind of fangirl or fanboy experience, primarily for kids 13 and up:

Mugglecast will celebrate its 10th anniversary in August—a major accomplishment in the fairly young universe of podcasts. May it wave the Hogwarts banners high forever. Everything and anything Harry Potter lovers could want is in its extensive archive of shows.

Verity is an all-female podcast among the many that discuss the sci fi favorite Doctor Who. Named after Verity Lambert, a young woman at the BBC (only 28 years old!) who worked her way up from typist to producer of one of the UK’s most beloved shows for kids and adults. And for the truly devoted, there’s also Lazy Doctor Who, in which two fans watch and discuss every episode of the 50-year-old TV show.

GeekScholars Movie News, /Film, and Filmspotting are all for passionate film nerds. Because they all tackle films that earn G to R ratings, some of the discussions may include topics not appropriate for sensitive or younger teens.

Finally, is your kid a “maker” interested in filling the gap in kidcasts? Reading Rockets has a nice how-to originally designed for teachers, but it will work well at home, too.

Shelley Sperry

Media Monday: Come and play! Everything’s still A-OK on kids’ TV

When I heard last year that the beloved Sesame Street was moving to HBO (for first-run only, then on to PBS) and making some changes, I felt a pang of nostalgia for the good old days of Big Bird, Luis, Maria, and Mr. Hooper (RIP). Why did they have to change the Street? Oscar in a recycling bin? Progress, right?

The good news from earlier this year is that the gold standard of preschooler programming, PBSKids, is expanding its offerings and its availability in a variety of ways so that kids can learn and sing and laugh with their favorite characters. PBS stations across the country will now be able to broadcast children’s programming 24/7 and stream it via pbskids.org and an app.

I no longer have a preschooler, so I’m a little out of touch with what’s happening in programming for the youngest viewers. My teen daughter says she still likes to watch clips of the little kids’ shows Super Why and Wordgirl, and of course, those of us who grew up with Mr. Rogers are deeply imprinted by that gentle neighborhood and the sound of the trolley bell. I decided to check on what’s new, good, and streaming for the under 5 bunch—things I hadn’t heard of before—and here’s what I found. I hope you’ll comment on any favorites you have and share with the rest of the Alt Ed Community.

(If you don’t subscribe to the streaming services, never fear: all three shows are easily previewed in clips on YouTube.)

Netflix
Word Party (coming July 8)
I’ve always heard that the best way to really learn something is to try to teach it to someone else. So now the Jim Henson Company is creating a TV series in which the kids who are watching teach baby animals new words. I can’t quite figure out how this one will work, but can’t wait to find out. Plus there’s singing and dancing, and the panda looks criminally cute.

Amazon Prime
Creative Galaxy
I happened to be a big Blue’s Clues fan back in the day, so the fact that its creator, Angela Santomero, is involved in this one gives it some points out of the gate. The show is also fresh and fun because it veers away from the usual preschool fare of numbers, shapes, and reading readiness. It’s about art as the solution to life’s problems! Arty the Alien and his friend Epiphany search the Creative Galaxy for tools and ideas for making their artistic solutions. And eventually real-life children try his cool art projects too. Mini bonus features that accompany the show suggest ways parents and kids can find art in unusual places—like the kitchen and the back yard.

Hulu
Guess with Jess
A cat with a British accent and a sly wink? I’d say it’s purrfection if I didn’t think the pun police would arrest me. This is a show in which Jess the cat and his friends on Greendale Farm solve mini mysteries like why acorns are buried under a tree and what makes a rainbow. They tackle all their Big Questions together. This one is heavy on the joy of friendship and little songs that any three- or four-year old will love.

Shelley Sperry