AMERICAN CREED EDUCATION CAMPAIGN
American Creed, an ongoing multiformat PBS project, invites students to explore the idea that America has a set of foundational ideals that can inform how we build community. Since 2018, students have been discussing American Creed documentary clips in classrooms around the country. With curricular support from the National Writing Project and KQED’s American Creed Youth Media Challenge, students reflect on those ideals and what matters most to them about their own communities. In the run up to America’s 250th anniversary, PBS LearningMedia is launching new films along with standards-aligned project-based learning activities.
To stay connected with the education campaign and find out about professional development workshops in your area, join the American Creed educator mailing list.
Meet “extraordinary, ordinary” young leaders and explore ideals that motivate them to serve their communities:
Sample photo essays:
“Coming Up In These Mountains” by Jonathan Blair
“Salmon Tales – Subsistence on the Kenai Peninsula” by Sam Schimmel
“Slag Valley” by Trinity Colón
“Community, Land and Care” by Jace Charger
Curricular guides:
PBS LearningMedia resources include discussion activities, critical analysis walk-throughs, and step-by-step guides for students to compose standards-aligned persuasive essays or photo-essays exploring their own experiences of community engagement.
Students respond to American Creed:
Education Partners
After exploring different stories about young people stepping up for their communities, students compose their own work—essays, photography projects or other media exploring their own values in stories about their own communities.
Student voice is amplified by the following partners:
America’s largest network of teachers of writing creates and distributes resources that support the use of American Creed documentary films and photography projects in classrooms and informal learning sites including 18 YouMedia production centers in public libraries around the country. After discussing American Creed films, youth create their own media and share their own perspectives on America’s democratic ideals.
Produced by KQED Education, this national youth media publishing platform is a vehicle through which students contribute their voices and visions to a national conversation sparked by American Creed documentary films and clips. KQED Education will conduct outreach to partner PBS stations so those stations can spotlight the work of local students in PBS markets around the country.
America’s largest and most trusted source of curricular materials utilized by over 1.6 million educators nationwide, PBS LearningMedia hosts American Creed short films, clips and open-source educational assets intended for classroom use.
Working Assumptions engages students in taking photographs and writing captions that explore family, community and care. Working Assumptions teaching artists are collaborating with the producers of American Creed to guide project participants in creating “mentor texts” that will serve as models for teens’ exploration of their own personal experiences using writing and photographs.
Underwriters
THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN CREED
The National Writing Project is conducting professional development and teacher training workshops to show educators how to utilize American Creed curricular resources and public media publishing platforms.
Join the American Creed mailing list for educators to see how you and your students can get involved.