RIPTON — Community members are invited to Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf Campus this Friday and Saturday to hear from students in Vermont and other parts of the country working to tackle various issues and enact social change in their communities. 

Those students are a part of the BLTN Next Generation Leadership Network, or BLTN NextGen, a youth social action network connecting students across ten sites around the U.S. The network is a project of the Bread Loaf Teacher Network at Middlebury Bread Loaf School of English. 

BLTN NextGen participants will gather at the Bread Loaf campus this weekend to connect with one another and share what they’ve been working on in their communities. 

The public is welcome to attend several student presentations throughout the weekend, including a film fest on Friday night featuring documentaries produced by students in Vermont and other parts of the country. 

“It’ll be a mix of internally-facing (students) getting to know each other, sharing strategies, learning about each other’s places, and also presenting and celebrating the work that they’ve done over the last year,” Tom McKenna, director of communications for the Bread Loaf Teacher Network and coordinator for the BLTN Next Gen, said of the gathering. 

The Bread Loaf Teacher Network is a professional development network for educators studying at the Bread Loaf School of English. The network was established in 1993 and has since evolved to include educators at independent and public schools throughout the country and abroad.

This summer, educators from 19 states, as well as Washington, D.C., and Scotland, are involved in the network. 

“The core of it we think about in terms of innovative and transformative teaching, where we are looking at teaching and learning across difference, across borders,” BLTN Director Beverly Moss explained. “Geographic borders, yes, but also class, race, gender, across differences where people come together with teachers from other areas; they put their students in conversation with each other.” 

At the foundation of the program is an idea coined by former BLTN Director Dixie Goswami that students are “resources to be tapped not problems to be solved.” Writing is also central to the program. 

Moss said the network is a space where teachers can get support. 

“If they’re the only teacher in our network from a rural area, they’re not isolated. They have a community that they’re tapping into through this network,” she said. 

NEXTGEN NETWORK 

One of BLTN’s goals is to develop a youth network as part of the network, Moss said, and in 2017 BLTN NextGen was founded. The network consists of 10 sites across the nation, from Vermont to rural South Carolina to the Navajo Nation. 

“Those sites are almost always anchored by Bread Loaf teachers, alums or people connected to the Bread Loaf Teachers Network,” McKenna said. 

McKenna noted that students in the network are self-selected and believe in making positive change in their communities through their literacy, which looks different from site to site.  

“The number one thing I hear from youth (involved in the network) is that they feel listened to,” McKenna said. “They feel like their voice is heard and not just ignored and ‘Oh, you’re just kids.’ Instead, they feel like when they speak up, there are adults who are ready to help them organize, to take action.” 

BLTN NextGen students in Philadelphia and Aiken, S.C., have focused on gun violence prevention and awareness. 

In Atlanta, students’ work has centered around the oral histories of graduates of Booker T. Washington High School, the first public high school for African-Americans in Georgia. 

One of the network’s social action teams is the Vermont-born What’s the Story? (WTS), “a year-long, credit-bearing experience devoted to helping middle and high school students create and publish documentary films that effect positive change.” 

Students in the program produce a documentary film exploring a social topic of their choosing. Over the past several years, and with the pandemic as a catalyst, WTS has shifted into its current structure as a virtual program open to students around the country. 

“A lot of people become interested in it just because it feels so different than what they’re used to being offered in a class or a school that they attend,” What’s the Story Director Tim O’Leary of Ripton said. “We ask students to develop the question that they also want to answer and then to take 10 months trying to answer that on their own but also with support of a site leader from their area and me, meeting every month, and that ability to just dive deep is often lost in school.”

This year groups of students from Vermont; D.C.; Santa Fe, N.M.; Aiken, S.C.; and Chelsea, Mass., took part in WTS. Students meet as a full cohort monthly on Zoom throughout the academic year, and O’Leary said the local sites help keep momentum going in each group week to week. 

Each year WTS culminates with a showcase of students’ films, an event that’s taken place at Champlain College the past couple of years and this year will take place during this weekend’s BLTN NextGen gathering at Bread Loaf. 

Farren Stainton is an incoming Middlebury College freshman from White River Junction who’s taken part in BLTN NextGen since she was in eighth grade. 

She’s participated in WTS, producing a film on climate change called “Our Changing Winters” that aired on PBS with other projects. Stainton has served on BLTN NexGen’s Youth Advisory Board and has more recently been focused on generating social action in her community around women’s rights.  

“NextGen is truly something special. It is a safe place for so many people to learn from each other through sharing and writing projects,” Stainton said. “It has been the most rewarding to hear people share from their life lessons which allow me to adjust and learn more from the experiences I go through in my life.” 

Stainton expressed excitement for this weekend’s gathering at Bread Loaf. 

“This retreat is a great way to connect with people of more diverse backgrounds and to learn more about various social action topics,” she said. 

This year’s gathering marks the first time NextGen participants will gather at the Bread Loaf campus since 2018, though cross-site gatherings have taken place in addition to the WTS showcase since then.  

STUDENT FILMS & MORE 

Over the course of the three-day retreat students will take part in community-building activities and present on the work they’re tackling in their communities. 

Presentations on Friday and Saturday will be open to the public and take place in Bread Loaf’s Barn social space. On Friday evening, community members can view nine youth documentaries during a WTS film fest beginning at 7 p.m. 

The film fest will run in three “sets” in which attendees will hear from filmmakers about their work and view the documentaries (each around 15 minutes). In between each set students will answer questions from the audience. 

Films screened during the event will include: 

• “To the Bone,” produced by Middlebury Union High School students Jacques Snell, Jillian Dragon and recent graduate Bowie Berloso. The film explores the challenges faced by those struggling with anorexia and ways toward recovery through the perspective of someone with the eating disorder. 

• “Depression: A Walk Through Mental Health,” produced by recent Champlain Valley Union High School graduate El Pintair. It explores “the spike in depression and suicidal ideation by sharing the stories of real people who have experience with the topic.” 

• “Misrepresented: Native Americans in Film,” produced by Eleseo Swentzell, a recent graduate of the Santa Fe Indian School in New Mexico. The film explores how the representation of Native Americans in film has evolved over the years, the misrepresentation of Native Americans in film and how those misrepresentation affect perceptions of individuals and tribes. 

• “Gentrification in Chelsea, MA,” by Joshua Alarcon, Jefferson Rivera, Richard Murcia and Alex Carey, all recent graduates of Chelsea High School. The film aims to “foster awareness and understanding of ongoing gentrification of Chelsea” by engaging residents in inclusive conversations, highlighting challenges and encouraging collaborative solutions. 

A full list of the films can be found in a YouTube playlist at tinyurl.com/ycyj2dnk. 

O’Leary said he’s looking forward to seeing students present their films.

“I hope that students at the Bread Loaf campus and engaging in a time-honored tradition of studying literature and writing also see the value in holding up not just the voices of Shakespeare and the like but the voices of students, and what it means for them to take center stage in a curriculum and produce content digitally,” he said. 

BLTN NextGen Presentation Schedule

The public is invited to attend the following presentations from BLTN NextGen students in Bread Loaf’s Barn social space this Friday, July 12, and Saturday July 13:

• Friday 11-11:45 a.m.: presentations and panel from Louisville, Ky., Philadelphia, and Chelsea, Mass., NextGen sites.

• Friday 1:30-2 p.m.: presentation from Aiken, S.C., site.

• Friday 2-2:45 p.m.: presentations and panel from Navajo Nation, Henrico, Va., and Washington, D.C., sites.

• Friday 7-9:30 p.m.: What’s The Story Film Fest featuring films from students across five sites.

• Saturday 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.: presentation (via Zoom) from Atlanta NextGen site and presentation from Santa Fe Indian School site.