Videos: Awareness Videos on Homelessness and Homeless Education

Project 16:49 is run by HEAT, the Homeless Education Action Team, which is a subcommittee of the Rock County Homeless Intervention Task Force (Beloit, Wisconsin). Project 16:49 is a group of service providers and concerned citizens who have been working to provide a safe and stable place for homeless Rock County teens since February 2008. In 2010, HEAT, in conjunction with R.E. Burgos of Films With a Purpose (F.W.A.P.) Studios, created and produced 16:49, a film about the 16 hours and 49 minutes homeless children and youth must live through between the end of one school day and the beginning of the next. Featuring the stories the experiences of Kayla, Cory, and Brandon, three unaccompanied homeless youth, 16:49 is a powerful look into the daily lives of some of our nation's most vulnerable kids.
Visit the Project 16:49 website.

Host Scott Pelley takes a closer look at family and youth homelessness in Central Florida. Pelley profiles several different families in homeless situations, including a family doubling up with a neighbor, a family living in a motel, and a family living in a truck.
View The Hard Times Generation (Part 1). 
View Families Living in Cars (Part 2).

Patricia Julianelle (Director of Program Advancement and Legal Affairs, SchoolHouse Connection) has created a series of videos that can be used to make training sessions more dynamic. These videos build awareness of homelessness while providing basic information about the McKinney-Vento Act.
Visit Education and Homelessness: Young Children to Young Adults webpage.

This video from the Texas Region XIII Education Service Center Homeless Education Project explores the issue of the immediate enrollment of children and youth experiencing homelessness. Through information and interviews, the video explores what federal law states about the immediate enrollment of homeless students and what schools can do to overcome the perceived obstacles to immediate enrollment.
Visit the Great Beginnings webpage.

This YouTube channel from Hear Us, a non-profit organization that produces films and books that are used by educators and other stakeholders to call attention to the crisis of family and youth homelessness, provides a variety of short- and medium-length awareness video clips.
Visit the Hear Us YouTube channel.

No Place to Call Home explores the issue of homelessness among college students, profiling several students attending Minneapolis Community and Technical College (MCTC) and the supports available to them as they confront the challenge of homelessness while working towards a college degree.
View No Place to Call Home.

This video simulation, created by NYS-TEACHS, highlights something often encountered but rarely examined - the way discussions about homelessness impact whether students in temporary housing are properly identified and enrolled in school. The simulation demonstrates the powerful effect of speaking with sensitivity, and conversely how the lack of sensitivity can derail a conversation with a parent. Conversation choices can make an enormous difference between whether the school district gets the information it needs to make a decision about eligibility under McKinney-Vento and ultimately whether the district is able to carry out its mandates properly under McKinney-Vento. Use this video simulation exercise to increase staff competence and confidence in working with families and students in temporary housing, while ensuring that conversations are productive for all involved.
Visit the NYS-TEACHS video simulation webpage.

If a homeless student is worrying about where he is spending the night, it's likely he's not going to be thinking much about his homework. And in one of the poorest districts in Kansas, educators have realized that to help homeless students they needed to do more to help homeless families. In February 2017, PBS Newshour special correspondent Lisa Stark of Education Week traveled to Kansas City to explore their unique program. 
View the PBS Newshour video.
Access PBS Newshour class discussion questions (grades 7-12).