The third year of our YMEJ seminar has begun! This year, we are focusing more explicitly on multiliteracies (the “M” in YMEJ), while still engaged in ample media production and media analysis in our journey to explore the ways in which the stories, lives, and institutional experiences of court-involved young people are represented and mediated.

Once again, we have an exciting new group of graduate students from several different departments at Teachers College who are taking this journey with us. You will be hearing from them soon.

Last week we were visited by the inimitable Prof. Suzanne Carothers who reminded us that we must look inward before we can move forward with our desires to “help” — in her invitation are echoes of those wise words from Australian Aboriginal artist and elder, Lilla Watson: “If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

As in years past, we are fortunate to have built a strong circle of critical friends who join us as guest speakers and share their insights and pose invitations to us to look and look again differently at that which we are in the pursuit of trying to understand. In this seminar, all of us are always students and teachers; we all learn with and from each other and of course with and from the young people with whom we continue to work and in service of whose educational wellbeing we are committed.

Join us as we embark on this next leg of our journey and as new bloggers share their perspectives with you. And in the meantime, don’t forget to follow us on twitter: @YMediaJustice

Planning for this year’s YMEJ Seminar

First class (photo by Melissa Wade – @honeybee22274)