Project Benefits

Benefits of Participating in Voices of Lake County

There are numerous benefits to encouraging your students to participate in the Voices of Lake County project, including:

  • The opportunity to share your personal narrative and voice – to be heard by others – can be incredibly empowering, especially for minoritized students who have limited opportunities to tell their stories.

  • Expressing themselves creatively enables students to better appreciate and value the stories of their lives, as well as those in their local communities.

  • Student projects have a built-in, public audience.

  • Students gain experience making decisions about content, the arrangement of information, tone, and structure to best meet the needs of a specific audience.

  • Students have the opportunity to participate in the Spring Showcase, where they can share their work with family, friends and community members.

  • Students gain experience in self-publicity and marketing.

  • They can meet other CLC students and network with faculty, staff and community members.

  • It looks great on their resumes or CVs.

  • It's fun!

Pedagogical Benefits

There are also many pedagogical benefits to implementing Voices of Lake County projects in the classroom, including:

  • Collaborative projects help create peer-centered learning environments, where students work together and learn from one another.

  • Students may gain essential skills in storytelling, research, and composing using print or digital media.

  • Students may gain experience in 21st century skills such as digital media production, digital photography, audio production, and more.

  • Students can learn and practice new technologies for creating digital stories, video, or other interactive, interpretive postcards.

  • Through the process of sharing their stories, students improve their public speaking skills.

Pedagogical Resources

Still not convinced? Consider the following resources.