Past
POV Watch Club
Overview
In February 2021, PBS launched POV Watch Club as part of a virtual professional learning series to support educators' continued growth and efforts to use documentaries in classrooms. Educators can access POV free documentaries, resources and pre-recorded conversations about each film can be used in classrooms and dives into relevant social issues in each film. PBS will provide a two-hour certificate of attendance at the end of each month.
Join the club for more critical documentaries and community conversations about how to teach towards liberation!
Being part of POV Watch Club has been a high-quality, thought-provoking professional development experience... It has inspired my creativity as an educator; I develop lessons, units and activities to incorporate the documentaries into the ELA courses I teach.
How It Works
Every month, PBS will showcase a POV documentary for educators to screen at home. The last week of the month, we will release an “aftershow” - a short segment that highlights how this film can be used in classrooms and dives into relevant social issues in each film. We'll share free lesson plans, reading lists, and discussion guides created with you in mind.
Week 1: Sign Up
Every month, educators can register for free access to a POV documentary highlighting intimate storytelling and social issues.
Week 2: Let’s Watch Together
Join hundreds of educators across the nation and screen the free documentary from home. After you watch, share your own questions, teaching ideas, and comments to our community board padlet.
Week 3: Let’s Talk
Engage with us on on padlet! Ask and answer questions from your fellow educators across the country.
Week 4: After Show
At the end of each month, come back to the TeachersLounge for an exclusive After Show with the PBS team, POV Engage, and special guests! We will dig into each documentary’s educational and social relevance. Expect conversations about anti-racist teaching approaches, ideas for critical media literacy integration, examples of how to bring POV’s free lesson plans and PBS LearningMedia into your classroom, and responses to your questions! Expect a casual, light-hearted, and laughter-filled conversation— we want to have fun, dish about docs, and talk about teaching.
2021 Schedule
- February: Whose Streets?
- March: American Promise
- April: In My Blood It Runs
- May: Through The Night
- June: Memories of a Penitent Heart
- July: The Neutral Ground
- August: Pier Kids
July: The Neutral Ground
The Neutral Ground documents New Orleans’ fight over monuments and America’s troubled romance with the Lost Cause. In 2015, director CJ Hunt was filming the New Orleans City Council’s vote to remove four Confederate monuments. But when that removal is halted by death threats, CJ sets out to understand why a losing army from 1865 still holds so much power in America.
After Show
In this month’s After Show our guests CJ Hunt, Cora Lee Davis, Kyley Pulphus, and Kelsey Reynolds engage in a critical conversation about media literacy and teaching for racial justice from their experiences as BIPOC filmmakers, activists, and educators. Join us for a conversation about the power of storytelling and the essential role educators have in presenting authentic, accurate, and truthful narratives about the world to our students. Educator Ahmariah Jackson joins to present his lesson plan about The Neutral Ground as a tool for bringing the documentary into classrooms. The lesson is designed to help students gain a more critical understanding of the controversies surrounding contemporary movements to remove confederate monuments.
June: Memories of a Penitent Heart
Memories of a Penitent Heart excavates a buried conflict around filmmaker Cecilia Aldarondo’s uncle Miguel, who died at a time when AIDS was synonymous with sin. As she searches for Miguel's partner decades later, the film — both a love story and a tribute — offers a cautionary tale of how faith can be used and abused in times of crisis.
- Resources
- Padlet
After Show
In this month’s After Show our guests enter the conversation around education and justice from their specific experiences as LGBTQIA+ faith leaders and teachers. Join us for a conversation about self-discovery, grace, compassion, the divine that is within all of us and our students - not despite, but because of our differences. It is an inspiring reminder about the vocation of teaching and caring for students and their capacity to thrive!
May: Through The Night
Through the Night is a verité documentary that explores the personal cost of our modern economy through the stories of two working mothers and a child care provider, whose lives intersect at a 24-hour daycare center in New Rochelle, New York.
After Show
As educators, advocates, and experts, Dr. Imani M. Cheers, Keami Harris, and Kristen Valley met to collectively reflect on the impacts and intersections Through the Night makes visible for educators and offer a deeply honest and critical conversation. Their generous invitation asks you to shift your perspective in relation to the students in your care, their families, and the systems that structure our lives. Echoing Nunu’s wisdom that “this is the way the world is set up at this point,” our guests untangle the interconnected strands of power; the historical foundations that still structure interlocking systems of oppression; and speak directly to you - educators - about the power you have to intervene in systems of harm. They not only remind us of students’ inherent value but also of the importance of teachers to carry us forward on the long and continued journey towards liberation.
April: In My Blood It Runs
In My Blood It Runs is a film about Dujuan, a ten-year-old Arrernte/Garrwa child healer whose family advocates for him to have a culturally sustaining education that affirms his Arrernte identity, while he also navigates western schooling in Australia. Central to this film are the themes of cultural and linguistic revitalization, Aboriginal peoples sovereignty, Land relations, and settler colonialism and schooling.
After Show
Our guests this month are Indigenous educators and scholars: Blanca Azucena (University of Texas, Austin) works at the intersections of public health, indigenous health practices and healing; Pablo Montes (University of Texas, Austin) focuses on the intersections of queer settler colonialism, Indigeneity, and Land education; Judith Landeros (University of Texas, Austin) dedicates her work to Indigenous girlhood, traditional healing knowledge, and schooling; and Marleen Villanueva (University of Toronto) studies Indigenous ways of knowing and being in relation to water, her work is centered in Early Childhood Education.
March: American Promise
American Promise spans 13 years as Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson, middle-class African-American parents in Brooklyn, N.Y., turn their cameras on their son, Idris, and his best friend, Seun, who make their way through Dalton, one of the most prestigious private schools in the country. Chronicling the boys' divergent paths from kindergarten through high school graduation, this provocative, intimate documentary presents complicated truths about America's struggle to come of age on issues of race, class and opportunity.
After Show
This month you will be invited into an intimate space of conversation, reflection, and honesty that reveals the costs of believing the promise of education in a racist society. Join Dr. Gina Tillis in conversation with Joe Brewster, Michèle Stephenson, Idris Brewster share their individual and collective wisdom. The After Show closes with some real-talk from your hosts as we honestly consider how this conversation inspired and affirmed our own reflections and experiences of education.
February: Whose Streets?
POV Watch Club launched with critically-acclaimed 2017 documentary Whose Streets?, a story told from the perspective of the people on the streets of St. Louis (and beyond) following the killing of unarmed teenager, Michael Brown, by the police. Whose Streets? is an unflinching look at the Ferguson, Missouri uprising.
After Show
We are thrilled to bring you the first After Show. Meet your hosts from the PBS Education team and from POV and witness a hard-hitting, truth-telling conversation between Matthew Kincaid, Founder and CEO of Overcoming Racism, and Elroy “EJ” Johnson, an educator and filmmaker about the urgency and importance of our February documentary, Whose Streets?. The first After Show ends with a familiar and passionate conversation between Courtney Cook and Vivett Dukes, ELA Teacher, activist, and advocate about ways to bring our free lesson plan and this documentary into your classroom. This After Show is filled to the brim with conversations about tips and tools for teaching for racial justice, using critical media skills to develop classroom curriculum, and what education for liberation promises and demands in our ever-changing world.
It gives a perspective that may be unknown to teachers. It can remove blind spots, gives a realistic view of the world in place of the stories textbooks tell. Removes the politics and shows a different reality
Special Thanks
Masthead
- Courtney B. Cook, Ph.D, Education Manager, POV
- Paula Hill, Content Development Specialist, PBS LearningMedia
- Abi Manivannan, Senior Associate, Programs & Engagement
- Meg Roosevelt, Associate Director, Content Development, PBS Education
- Will Tolliver, Jr., Outreach Specialist
- Allie Toomey, Promotional Lead
About POV Engage
We implement both short and long-term strategies for positioning documentaries to open minds and advance social justice. Working in partnerships with grassroots groups and NGOs, we aspire to enhance our community programming, extend the reach of our films and move our impact work forward.We welcome collaboration with impact producers, film teams, educators and librarians to produce educational resources and strengthen community engagement.
About PBS LearningMedia
As America’s largest classroom, PBS offers digital content and services for teachers of children from pre-K through 12th grade that help bring classroom lessons to life. PBS LearningMedia, a partnership of PBS and WGBH Educational Foundation, is a free and paid media-on-demand service offering educators access to the best of public media and delivers research-based, classroom-ready digital learning experiences to engage students in exploring curriculum concepts that align with National and Common Core State Standards. Nationwide, more than 1.6 million teachers have registered access to more than 100,000 digital resources available through PBS LearningMedia. More information about PBS LearningMedia is available at www.pbslearningmedia.org or by following PBS LearningMedia on Twitter and Facebook.