The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Academy Foundation conduct a media literacy program twice a year for high school juniors within the Los Angeles Unified School District. The Academy works in a partnership with the Los Angeles Educational Partnership’s Humanitas program and (until recently) the Los Angeles Times, Times in Education.

The program brings 300-500 high schools students to the Academy for three days to take part in a series of film clip analyses, feature film screenings, filmmaker visits, large group discussions in the Academy’s theater as well as small breakout discussions. The goals of the program are to increase student awareness of the media messages they encounter every day, to provide and hone analytical tools to evaluate those messages, and to encourage more provocative and thoughtful interaction with the media.

As part of the program, students are required to complete a final written assignment based on what is covered in the program. Teachers are then asked to submit the best work to the program’s Academy facilitators who compile the projects in a newsprint broadsheet that is eventually distributed to the students.