First Generation Students

First Generation Videos

Student Success Series, A Student’s Guide to College Transition There’s a lot more to college than going to class and studying! A Student’s Guide to College Transition highlights the range of opportunities available to students outside the classroom and underscores why it’s so important to take part in at least some of these activities. Cultivating new experiences and developing diverse skill sets not only enriches the overall college experience but makes students better prepared for employment opportunities. Grounded in research, but also accessible, this video will help students increase their understanding of the best opportunities for students to pursue outside the classroom to ensure skill development, increased knowledge, and overall personal growth.
First Generation
An award-winning documentary narrated by Golden Globe nominee Blair Underwood, First Generation tells the story of four high school students – an inner city athlete, a small town waitress, a Samoan warrior dancer, and the daughter of migrant field workers – who set out to break the cycle of poverty and bring hope to their families and communities by pursuing a college education.

First Gen Movies in The Chicago School Library

Only I Can Hear In the American Midwest, three hearing teenagers come of age in the vibrant, raucous Deaf community. In search of a home between two disparate worlds, the young women explore their unique identity as CODA — Children of Deaf Adults, as they strive to fit into both the deaf and hearing communities to which they belong.
Kid Icarus Eighteen year-old Leigh lives in a trailer park on the outskirts of Los Angeles, he goes to community college, has no real friends, no girlfriend, and works part-time at The Home Depot. With an obsession for Steven Spielberg and enrolled in a film production class at his local college, he is sure all his misery can change, so he sets out to make his cinematic masterpiece, "Enslavence". He hopes this film is his ticket out of a mundane life and into a world of popularity, money, and success. And he may actually be on his way, if he doesn't self-destruct first.
Autism Goes to College Five students on the autism spectrum — Guillermo, Jasmine, Caroline, Jonathan, and Aniella — invite viewers into their dorms and classrooms to show the world how they make college work for them. They share their dreams, fears, failures, and successes with candid insights and humor.
Home + Away This coming-of-age story follows three students of El Paso’s Bowie High and their search for the American dream — a dream inspired by family, fueled by sports, and complicated by the US/Mexican border. Soccer player Erik dreams of playing professionally; wrestler Shyanne sees the army as a ticket to college; and pitcher Francisco plays each game thinking of his dad who isn't allowed into the US.

Helping First Generation Students

How Faculty Mentors Can Help First-Generation Students Succeed PBS News Hour. A new initiative by the University of California system uses first-generation faculty to guide first-generation students, with the goal of decreasing dropout rates. As part of our series Rethinking College, Hari Sreenivasan visits UCLA to see how the program is working.
First in the Family: Help Your College Student Succeed and Prosper the First Year and Every Year
How to Read and Understand a Research Study
A student preparing to critique a research paper happens on a TV show that explains the different sections of research papers. The show draws on experts and examples to help the student understand what she should look for to evaluate each section of the paper.

First Gen Movies & TV Shows Via Streaming Services

Good Will Hunting A janitor at MIT, Will Hunting has a gift for math and chemistry that can take him light-years beyond his blue-collar roots, but he doesn't realize his potential and can't even imagine leaving his childhood Boston South End neighborhood, his construction job, or his best friend. To complicate matters, several strangers enter the equation: a brilliant math professor who discovers, even envies, Will's gifts, an empathetic shrink who identifies with Will's blue-collar roots, and a beautiful, gifted pre-med student who shows him, for the first time in his life, the possibility of love.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding Toula Portokalos is a thirty-year-old single Greek-American woman, living with her parents and brother in a Chicago Greek community. After convincing her father to let her go to the university, she meets the non-Greek Ian Miller and they decide to get married. Her father does not accept the wedding of his daughter with a non-Greek man.
A Different World Denise Huxtable arrives for her freshmen year at Hillman College, alma mater of her father Cliff Huxtable. In this first season, Denise injects herself into a campus-wide debate over the role of women in society, participates in traditional school shenanigans, crushes on a teacher and deals with the turbulent relationships of college life.
Family Matters The Winslow family is a pretty normal family except for one thing, their neighbor Steve Urkel. A genius and klutz, Steve makes some really weird inventions while driving the Winslows insane and having an unrequited crush on Laura, the Winslow's middle child.
In the Heights A film version of the Broadway musical in which Usnavi, a sympathetic New York bodega owner, saves every penny every day as he imagines and sings about a better life.
CODA As a CODA (Child of Deaf Adults) Ruby is the only hearing person in her deaf family. When the family's fishing business is threatened, Ruby finds herself torn between pursuing her passion at Berklee College of Music and her fear of abandoning her parents.
Don Don is a 2022 Indian Tamil-language coming-of-age comedy drama film that revolves around a reluctant engineering student repeatedly clashing with his college's discipline mentor, while still trying to discover his passion in life and prove his eligibility to his father.
Higher Learning The film follows the changing lives of three incoming freshmen at the fictional Columbus University: Malik Williams (Omar Epps), a track star who struggles with academics; Kristen Connor (Kristy Swanson), a shy and naive girl; and Remy (Michael Rapaport), a lonely and confused man seemingly out of place in his new environment.
The Great Debaters A drama based on the true story of Melvin B. Tolson, a professor at Wiley College Texas. In 1935, he inspired students to form the school's first debate team, which went on to challenge Harvard in the national championship.

Last Updated: Oct 3, 2024 3:21 PM
URL: https://library.thechicagoschool.edu/firstgen
Print Page

Subjects: Student Resources