Storyboarding

Introduction

Are children from East Austin exposed to environmental hazards on their way to school? If yes, are they aware of these hazards? To document children's perceptions and knowledge of environmental hazards, we worked with teachers at Zavala Elementary and members of PODER to design a storyboarding exercise. This exercise would allow children to illustrate, with words and pictures, places in their
		5th graders during storyboarding
community that they liked, or that they disliked, and to prepare them for the workshop the following Saturday. The 5th grade teacher at Zavala assisted in developing the forms used for this activity, encouraged other teachers to participate, and explained the project in depth to his students.

Classroom Activities
We organized two storyboarding activities on March 1 and March 21 with 5th and 6th grades of Zavala Elementary. Members of PODER participated in both events, presenting the main goals of the project, the importance of children's perceptions for their work, and the most significant environmental hazards in the neighborhood. During the first storyboarding event, we instructed 5th and 6th graders to draw “places they like” and places they “do not like.” We also provided each student with a large-scale map of the neighborhood and instructed them to draw their routes from home to school. The students brought these forms home and returned them to the teacher the next day. For the second storyboarding, with 6th-graders alone, the 6th grade teacher suggested a change in the methodology. Instead of completing storyboards, the children drew a mental map of their route from school to home. They were also encouraged to mark the “places they liked” or places they “did not like” on their maps. This approach seemed more appropriate because of the age of the students.

Mental map - 6th grade	"The Place I do not like" drawing

Results
Although we collected some of the children's perceptions about environmental hazards, most of the students did not include commonly recognized hazards in their drawings or maps. Only 13% of the drawings included the Holly Power Plant, the factory Pure Casting (located across the street from Zavala) or any other hazardous places. Most of the sites children disliked were related to safety issues, such as parks with drug- dealers, streets with excessive traffic, and abandoned houses. Most of the children chose to draw the playground at Zavala Elementary as their favorite place. Many of the mental maps were missing children’s important places, in part because of lack of instruction by the teacher. Although the storyboarding activity needs improvement, it helped illustrate the difference between children’s and expert perceptions of “environmental hazards” and safety.

Workshop Evaluation

Introduction

For the purposes of gathering children’s perceptions of the environment in East Austin, The University of Texas and PODER coordinated two Saturday workshops with Zavala Elementary School. During these workshops, Zavala students were divided into small groups based on the location of their homes. These small groups worked with UT students and PODER interns to map environmental hazards within a specified grid and collect sensory information on
		Jean Niswonger and Nora Coronado during workshop
each Point of Interest. Our class spent several weeks creating and refining the methodology to collect this information from the Zavala students. Challenges we addressed during the semester included ethics of representing children’s voices, prioritization of education or data collection, and logistics of working with children of various ages.

Factors for Success
A few particular factors contributed to the success of the workshops:

• Support and engagement by the teachers,

• Maintaining an age-appropriate approach including games at the beginning of the event, an attitude of fun throughout, language on the data collection forms, and length of time spent in the field with the children.

• Keeping our priorities aligned with PODER’s goals.

Mr. Guillermo Barrera (Mr. B), a fifth grade teacher, served as our primary contact at Zavala. Mr. B was highly supportive of our efforts to map environmental hazards in Austin: he worked with our class to develop our research methodology, devoted class time to teaching mapping and environmental hazards, and required his students to attend the Saturday workshop. In the second workshop,
		Children taking photos during workshop
which was geared towards a sixth grade class, student participation was very low. This might be explained by the different approach taken in this class: students were not required to attend, and the workshop had been postponed after we conducted the initial storyboarding.

"My interesting points" form

Challenges

Though designing our methodology was the most time-consuming aspect of the workshops, gaining the support of the teachers turned out to be the biggest challenge. We learned that without the engagement of teachers, we had very little chance at gaining interest and participation from their students. Mr. Barerra’s involvement helped us create forms appropriate for his fifth grade class and get a high student turnout for the first workshop. When we attempted
		Group walking during workshop
to hold a workshop for the sixth grade only one Zavala student participated. The UT students who helped the sixth-grader map out his Points of Interest quickly realized the forms and approach geared towards fifth-graders were too basic for sixth-grade students. Engagement of parents in this project was also challenging. We originally anticipated that parents would accompany their children on the mapping walks, providing us with an opportunity to capture parents’ perspectives as well. However, only parent attended either of the workshops.

Conclusion
Overall, the student participants, our community partner, PODER, and our primary Zavala partner considered the workshops a success. Through these two workshops we collected valuable data on children’s perceptions of their environment, developed a methodology that can be replicated in future years, established partnerships with parents and teachers, and produced a clear plan for improving participation.

For further reading:
Participatory Research with Children for Environmental Justice in East Austin, by Mariana Montoya and Suzanne Russo

Video:
Scott Grantham explains the "interesting points" form
Children during workshop walk
Susana Almanza reflects on the workshop
Mr. Barrera explains storyboarding
Children discuss 1
Children discuss 2