Our plan is grounded in the following two premises: 1) When purposefully synchronized with one another across
multiple forms
of media («cross-media»),
children's and adolescents» exposure to high quality youth - oriented social and ethical story content, i.e. stories
of substance specifically about character development, compassion, and courage (CCC), is a powerful way to promote youth academic achievement and ethical values; 2) Especially if these stories, told and «read» across media, in their
various genres (human interest, biography, history and historical fiction, civic engagement, coming
of age, social change, spiritual awakening, moral issues, etc.), are «taught» by «educators» (broadly defined) using an «evidence - based» pedagogy that A) makes use
of peer to peer, and adult facilitated group discussion and debate as a primary form
of instruction, and B) takes advantage
of access to the texts
of the story that are made available cross-media (narratives, scripts, videos, etc.) to foster students» critical thinking and ethical reflection skills.