Engaging YouTube to Tell Our Own Stories

• In Event: Restorying Young Adult Literature to Reconstruct Educational Possibility in Classrooms and Beyond

Abstract

In this presentation, two undergraduate student researchers (Presenter 2 and 3) and a professor and educational researcher (Presenter 1) will explain how a group of first-generation-to-college, Latinx students worked together to restory dominant, white-centric narratives about going to college by making a YouTube channel. By discussing our experiences making YouTube videos about the students’ unique college-transition journeys, we will demonstrate the possibilities of using digital composing to disrupt the monolithic narratives about going to college that circulate throughout youth culture and school curriculums. We will explain how we decided to create a YouTube channel in the context of an 18-month participatory research project, and then we will share two data example from videos made by Presenter 2 and Presenter 3, which we have selected from a larger corpus of 12 youth-produced videos. We will use our analysis of the two focal videos to explain how – even though the youth video-makers were all first-gen and all Latinx – they each had different stories to share, and the differences in their stories counter and restory mainstream, white-centric narratives about going to college and monolithic representations of first-gen and minoritized students. We will also explain why we chose. YouTube as our platform for restorying because it allowed us to reach other students who need access to alternate representations of college transition. Ultimately, our restorying on YouTube demonstrates the power of youth telling their own stories, in their own ways, on platforms that are important and accessible to them.

Authors

• Bethany Monea, University of the District of Columbia

• Perla Gonzalez, George Mason University

• Joselyn Andrade, George Mason University