Steve Goodman

Steve Goodman (he/him) is the founding executive director emeritus of the Educational Video Center. After producing an acclaimed documentary on a South Bronx youth gang in the 1970s and teaching video in a Lower East Side alternative high school, he established EVC in 1984 to empower youth to make their voices heard about critical issues in their lives. Under his direction for nearly 35 years, students at EVC have produced powerful social justice documentaries that have won over 100 awards, including an Emmy. 

 

Trained as a journalist at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, Goodman has directed award-winning independent documentaries and has taught in New York City transfer high schools; New York University; University of London, Institute of Education; and other universities. Co-author of EVC’s Youth-Powered Video curriculum, he has brought EVC’s methodology to youth through summer documentary camps in rural Appalachia and across the world through workshops in Soweto, South Africa; Belfast, Northern Ireland; London, England; and Bangalore and Delhi, India. 

 

Goodman writes extensively on critical media literacy, youth media, civic engagement and education reform for numerous publications. He is the author of Teaching Youth Media: A Critical Guide to Literacy, Video Production, and Social Change and most recently author of It’s Not About Grit: Trauma, Inequity and the Power of Transformative Teaching which was a 2019 Prose Award Finalist in Education and won the 2018 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Gold Award in Education.