Packed House at the "Girl Rising" Film Screening

At Oak Lawn Hometown Middle School, 11 eighth grade students contributed their time and effort to conduct a screening of the film “Girl Rising.” 

This film takes viewers through the struggles of nine young women who, like many, have had the desire to learn but were not fortunate enough to go to school.  Through participating in this project, students learned that there are 66 million girls out of school globally and 33 million fewer girls than boys in primary school.  “Girl Rising” highlights the strength of the girls who face these obstacles and demonstrates the power of education to transform societies. 

During a recent unit exploring the theme of adversity in their eighth grade language arts class, the students and their classmates viewed two chapters of the film “Girl Rising.” After learning about the unique circumstances that the two young women faced, they developed a strong curiosity about the other girls’ stories and how to become involved in the movement. 

As Alex Drexel stated, “My motivation to complete this project was that I really despise the fact that girls are not given choices. Also, I believe that everyone deserves an education to do what they want with their lives.”  Kelsie Haseltine commented, “I was motivated to complete it because I wanted to help the girls that don’t have the same opportunities as I do. I want the girls in the movie, and every other girl to get the help and support they need.”  

Several students were struck by how unreal the startling facts revealed in this film are.  Alex Crivellone stated, “The problems faced by the people shown in the clips from the movie we watched seemed to be non existent to people here, because to me going to school and receiving an education seem like a given.”

While working on this project, the students developed a plan to host the screening at their school with their language arts teacher, Mrs. Judy Rayson, and the technology coach, Mr. Brian Jurinek. They had the opportunity to spend time working on writing articles and letters to send to newspapers, creating posters to spread the word at school, filming videos to promote their cause, and looking for different ways to raise money which would help fund the screening. These actions allowed them to share an area of interest in school with the community and to develop writing pieces for an authentic audience. 

Their primary goal was to raise money to make it possible for the school to afford the screening of “Girl Rising” in order to raise awareness about the problem through viewing the film. When this goal was achieved, they planned an evening in which students and community members were welcomed to attend the screening in the school library.  Their event was well attended and participants were very affected by the strength of the film’s message.  

One of the guests at the screening was Olivia Torres, a fourth grader from Hometown School, who was actually involved in the production of the film.  Olivia’s mother, MaryAlice Torres, commented, “Olivia is very proud of this film and it has really opened our eyes and made us realize how grateful we are. Although Olivia was only 8 when she filmed Girl Rising, she has an understanding of what underprivileged girls go through just to achieve an education and I think it has made her even more humble.” This sense of appreciation was felt by all of the participants of this project as well.

Written by:  By Alex Crivellone, Grace Law, Viviana Urbano, and Jack Waters

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