Teaching and mentoring resources

All of Heath's documentary films and a number of her publications have targeted school teachers, teaching artists in youth organizations, and educators working in museums and other community sites. All of her research has been carried out in under-resourced communities, often in minority-dominant and immigrant neighborhoods. Policymakers, organizational leaders, and teachers eager to meet the learning needs of bilingual/multilingual children and young people find in Heath's documentaries and resource guides "best principles" for co-creating effective learning environments that engage children and young people. Mentoring, along with participatory leadership, scaffolded learning, and professional critique, define the learning environments that help young people carry forward the skills and information they gain in community organizations that have high expectations of young learners.

Noted here are resources that provide case studies, guidelines, and generative principles for building and maintaining positive learning environments in communities. The fieldwork for these resources has been carried out primarily in the United States and England, and sections below denote those publications related specifically to each of these locations:

Section 1: United States


Documentary films:
2005. ArtShow 2 Grow. Director and producer. DVD with ArtShow (2000) with director's commentary; new documentary (14 min.) updating five years of progress for one arts-focused youth organization included in 2000 documentary; and new documentary (14 min.) on an agricultural sciences youth program serving inner-city and suburban youth. Includes 16-page informative brochure on both programs. [Available from Partners for Livable Communities]

2000. ArtShow. Director. Documentary video produced for Partners for Livable Communities and for distribution to PBS. 56 min. 40 sec. [Winner of Gold Award, Worldfest Video and Film Festival, Houston, 2000; Winner of Chris Award, 2000]. [No longer available in video format; now on DVD ArtShow 2 Grow]
1995. LISTEN UP! Youth as Resources. Director. Documentary video produced with Milbrey W. McLaughlin, Stanford University. Funded by the Spencer Foundation. 26 minutes. [Contact Heath directly for free copy]
1986. Inside Learners: Cross-age Tutoring in Bilingual Education. Director and Producer. Documentary video. Funded by the Packard Foundation. 28 min. [contact Heath directly for free copy]


Resource guides:
1999. (co-authored with Laura Smyth). ArtShow: Youth and community development. A resource guide to accompany documentary ArtShow. In cooperation with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Washington, D.C. Partners for Livable Communities. 96 pp. [Available from Partners for Livable Communities]
1999. (co-authored with Sara DeWitt). Truths to tell: Youth and newspaper reading. Monograph. St. Petersburg, FL: Poynter Institute, 1995. Pp. 26. [Contact Heath directly for free copy.]
1991. (with Leslie Mangiola). Children of promise: Language-based learning with students of diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Washington, D.C.: National Education Association, Center for the Study of Writing, and American Educational Research Association. Pp.64. [Contact Heath directly for free copy.]

Next Page Section 2: England