Colleen Kelly's Field Reports

I am so excited - an idea I had back in April at the NTEN Conference has finally come to fruition!!! …read more

As I sit at my new desk at CTC VISTA Project Headquarters at UMass Boston - it occurred to me - wow. I bet none of the other VISTAs know that I am here! I said goodbye to Project: Think Different on Friday, March 2. I said HELLO! to Project HQ on Monday, March 5. I am helping with outreach and building the wiki on ctcvista.org. I am still trying to get used to the huge change of venues - Project HQ is extremely different from Project: Think Different. …read more

Erin Taylor asked me to write a little something for the upcoming VISTA digest... here is what I submitted (a sneak preview!): You would think creating a new media literacy series would be easy enough. There are enough of them out there. Thus, when I was asked as a brand new VISTA to create a new media literacy curriculum for Project: Think Different, I figured I would just quote some Noam Chomsky and maybe throw in some media statistics and get something at least presentable together. The task seemed simple. But, (there is always a “but”) I needed to make the curriculum accessible to teens. Boston teens. Boston teens living in the neighborhoods in which teenage death rates are the highest, in which an attraction to hip-hop music and commercial materialism are identifying aspects of the youth culture, and in which young people are most likely to be portrayed in the news media in relation to situations of crime and violence. Clearly these are the teens in the greatest need of media literacy awareness, but how in the world was a white, relatively affluent, punk, college-graduate female from Austin, Texas ever going to create something that actually works for these kids? Seeing as my first days in Boston included getting severely confused by public transportation, being shocked at how many people lacked innate kindness, and staring in disbelief at how the seemingly numerous Dunkin’ Donuts actually all had customers, the task seemed slightly daunting at best. How could I ever relate? …read more

The new VISTA website looks phenomenal- much props to the creators. Life at Project: Think Different has been going well.  Currently, I am working on a brand new media literacy series that we will be teaching to youth around Boston. It is co-created with our Media Watch Team- a part-time staff of teens (ages 16-19) that are working to become media literacy buffs! I am really excited about it; I think the work is extremely accessible for inner-city kids. We have a focus on hip-hop and movies and have really geared the curriculum towards the "cool factor". I sound like such an idiot saying that, but it's true. …read more