DATA Students Provide Total Coverage of El Paseo Fashion Show

Digital Arts Technology Academy (DATA) students at Cathedral City High School are documenting this week's Fashion Week on El Paseo. Sunday evening's show was themed the Best of Saks Fifth Avenue. Monday night the tent opens at 7 p.m for the 8 p.m. show entitled Fashion Runway Bar. The photo at left was taken by DATA senior Spencer McQuin.

DATA digital storytellers document CUE at Convention Center

DATA digital storytellers Jessica Gerrel and Arin Wall filmed and edited CUE Live productions at the Computer Using Educators Conference at the Palm Springs Convention Center on March 18, 2011. The CUE Conference is the largest and oldest education technology conference in California, and among the largest in the United States. Their videos can be viewed on School Tube.

Documentary Exposes AIDS Problem in Africa

Students in the Digital Arts Technology Academy attended a screening of the documentary "Angels in the Dust" Tuesday morning at the Palm Springs High School theater. The film is about Marion Cloete who abandons a life of privilege in Johannesburg to build Botshabelo, a village and school that provides orphaned children with shelter, food and education.

"The film made me reevualuate my health, my life and my family," said DATA senior Jessica Gerrell.

"It made made me realize that there are still good people out there devoting their lives to helping others," said DATA junior Paola Fernandez.

"I admire the Cloete family because they took their entire savings and built an orphange because not a lot of people would take everything they own and put it into an orphanagge to help children who are victims of AIDS," said DATA senior Jennifer Juarez.

James Egan is the Producer of the documentary.

Neely Tucker of the Washington Post wrote this about the documentary: "...you will be moved, if not stunned, by this straightforward, unadorned example of filmmaking. Director Louise Hogarth uses no voice-over narration, no real narrative device to move the story along. She just turned on the camera in 2004 and spent a large chunk of the next two years following Cloete on her duties, which range from playing with children to loading bodies in the mortuary into coffins and then into the back of a pickup."

Following the screening, Katherine Sanchez and Yoryely Rojas, two students in Matt Hamilton's digital storytelling class at Cathedral City High School, sat down with Hogarth to talk about her documentary.

Hogarth told the students that the film had a such a strong impact on her life that she started the orphan bracelet campaign, which is called DO Ubuntu, which means do unto others as you would have them do unto you. She employes women in South Africa who are living with HIV to make the bracelets. The profits go to a program that feeds 200 South African children every day, as well as capital projects, which recently included building a house in Uganda and a wing on an orphanage.

"Before making the documentary, I was very aware of the HIV problem in Africa and I wanted to make the rest of the world aware of it," said Hogarth. "At that point in time, South Africa wasn't able to get any HIV drugs because the president of Africa didn't believe HIV caused AIDS, so I was hoping this documentary would help to rectify that situation and put a spotlight on that situation and encourage people to help in any way they could."

Cathedral City High School photojournalist Spencer McQuinn is creating the runway graphics for the Fashion Week El Paseo Runway Bar. The senior student in the Digital Arts Technology Academy at CCHS spent Monday afternoon shooting images of Christina De Musee's acrylic on canvas art work and then sat down with Palm Springs Life Magazine Fashion Editor Susan Stein to pair the store names with the artwork. At left is an example of his work.

McQuinn is a student in Matt Hamilton's Digital Storytelling Class at Cathedral City High School.

Fashion week is March 20-28.

"Louder Than A Bomb," "Soul Boy" A Hit With PSUSD Students

Students from all over Coachella Valley packed the Palm Springs High School auditorium Wednesday morning to screen the documentary "Louder Than A Bomb" and "Soul Boy." Both films were received with enthusiastic applause by the students.

At left are two of the stars of the documentary, Nate Marshall and Novana Venerable.

The event was sponsored by the Palm Springs International Film Festival whose Programming/Education Outreach Coordinator is Ken Jacobson.

Following the screening, Jennifer Juarez, a student in Matt Hamilton and David Vogel's Digital Storytelling Class at Cathedral City High School, had a chance to interview "Louder Than A Bomb" director Greg Jacobs.

Jennifer: Why did you decide to do this documentary?

Director Greg Jacobs: I was driving by Wrigley Field in Chicago one night, in March of 2005, and I happened to pass by a club called The Metro. The marquee said "Louder Than A Bomb High School Slam Poetry Finals Tonight." There was a line of kids of every shape, size and color all the way down the street. It was so strange to see that kind of diversity on the north side of Chicago on a Saturday night--and for poetry. That meant there were kids inside reading their own poetry. We just thought that was a really interesting thing going on that we didn't know about so we decided to take a look.

Jennifer: What was your biggest challenge?

Director Greg Jacobs: The biggest challenge was how to go about telling the story. It took two years to edit it, and while we had done hundreds of other documentaries, we had never done a feature documentary before. It took a long time to figure out how to tell the story.

Jennifer: How did you pick the high students who are the stars of the documentary?

Director Greg Jacobs: We went the year before to the finals and decided we would take the measure of who was there and who was coming back. We knew that to make a documentary like this, the poems had to be great and the kids had to be interesting as well as great performers. Nate, Nova and the others just jumped out at us in the finals, and they were coming back. It was so obvious they were the great ones to follow. We picked them and only followed them, and they are unbelievable.

Palm Springs Unified Students Tackle Bullying Issues

Palm Springs Unified School District school board member Shari Stewart told a group of students at the Tolerance Education Center (TEC) Monday morning Dec. 6, 2010 that it was "enlightening and really opened up my eyes" after hearing 90 minutes of PSUSD students talk about their experiences of bullying in and out of school.

Fellow board member Justin Blake called the event "groundbreaking" and "something that will change society.”

The event was a symposium for tolerance, empathy and compassion sponsored by the Palm Springs Unified School District, the TEC, and the Digital Arts Technology Academy of Cathedral City High School.

The premise was simple: gather student leaders from the four district high schools to talk about bullying and to take steps to empower other students to stand up and say, “Bullying needs to end. And we’re going to end it.”

I’ve been a high school teacher in California for 22 years, the last 10 at Cathedral City High School. I had no idea bullying was such a deep and insidious problem. In preparation for the symposium, I conducted two hours of interviews with students from Mt. San Jacinto and Cathedral City High School about bullying.

There was the story of a CCHS sophomore girl who had her lunch punched to mulch every day in elementary school, and she went hungry. There is still pain in her face when she recalls those times, many years ago.

There was the girl at Mt. San Jacinto whose brother was kicked in the stomach and thrown in a trash can by his relatives. “Family shouldn’t do that to family,” she said, as her voice faded away in indignation.

There was the student who stood up for “the nerd” and got suspended and placed on probation. And then there was the bully himself, who, when finally confronted by his victim, eventually relented and became, instead, a friend.

And finally there was my student, someone I see everyday in English Class and later in the day in digital storytelling Class, who stood up Monday morning, among a theater full of her peers, and, through tears and a choking voice, told her story:

“Hi everybody. My name is Marisa Smith and I go to Cathedral City High School. And I've never really had any bullying done to me, but something happened to my sister a couple weeks ago.

“She was being pushed in the P.E. lockers and called names, and it made me really mad because it was two girls that were doing this to her. It wasn’t just one girl.

“And what made me even madder was that nobody said anything, and you guys all know how crowded the lockers get.

“Not one person did anything for her, and it just makes me mad that that’s how kids are. You know nobody will stand up and say anything because it’s just one person. If it’s everybody, those kids are gonna step down.”

The tables were turned Monday at the symposium--on purpose. Adults were there to listen to students, students who shared their stories and talked in calm and measured voices about their hurt and outrage.

One of the most strident voices was Kendra Ongalibang, a senior at Desert Hot Springs, whom my colleague David Vogel calls “the next Oprah,” for her intelligence and her passion and her charisma.

On her own volition, Kendra has started an anti-bullying campaign that she takes to the middle schools. It is such a game-changer that at the end of the presentation, she has bullies standing up and apologizing to their classmates. After the symposium, Kendra shared her expertise with other student leaders in the hallway of the TEC, sowing the seeds of change.

Kendra makes us all accountable for bullying; in this case, you really are part of the problem if you are not part of the solution. We’re all those kids in the locker room, standing there, watching someone be bullied. But we don’t have to be.

If we are decisive and determined and shoulder to shoulder, we can make them step down.

-Matt Hamilton

Kathy DeRosa Begins Fourth Term as Cathedral City Mayor

Cathedral City High School Journalism students Olivia Reynolds, Gabe Jimenez, and Sandra Bahena interviewed Mayor Kathy DeRosa following her swearing in Dec. 1, 2010 at the Cathedral City council chambers. All three are students in Matt Hamilton and David Vogel's digital storytelling class at Cathedral City High School.

Kathy DeRosa sworn in for fourth time as mayor of Cathedral City from Matt Hamilton on Vimeo.