Before Global Media Studies became a magnet school, it was an acclaimed media program founded by counselor Cathee Cohen, pictured at left.

 

Affectionately called "The House Cathee Built," the current GMS facility was conceived in 1996 when Ms. Cohen won a grant to start a media program at Cleveland High School. The Media Academy officially opened in 2003, but Cohen wrote the curriculum and enrolled students as early as 1999. The construction contract was scheduled to take 230 days, but it ended up taking four years!

 

A fancy facility is nothing without a passionate and talented team of teachers, of course, and that role was ably filled by founding teachers Evelyn Seubert and James Gleason. This dynamic duo not only taught together and created a number of specialized media classes, including the broadcast class which produces KCAV, but they saw the program through several incarnations.

 

The Media Academy became a small learning community called GAIMS (the Global Academy of Interdisciplinary Studies) in 2015. This program merged three existing programs into one (the Green Power Academy, the Media Academy, and Interdisciplinary Studies). In 2016 GAIMS applied and was approved to become an LAUSD Linked Learning school (which it still is today). In 2018 GAIMS applied to become a magnet school, and in 2019 GMS officially opened its doors, with the ability to draw interested students from all over LAUSD.

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Video DM / KCAV Teacher

Evelyn Mary Seubert teaches film and television production in the GMS Magnet. For her devotion to helping young people develop into visionary artists who make positive contributions to the world, she received the Kennedy Center/Stephen Sondheim Inspirational Teacher Award in 2015 and became a Purpose Prize Fellow in the same year.

 

Ms. Seubert co-founded and is President of the International Youth Media Summit, a yearly event begun in 2005 that brings together students from all over the world to create collaborative video projects based on pressing social issues. Ms. Seubert is also co-founder and Executive Director of the Teen International Media Exchange (TIME), which has sponsored in-country trips to Korea and Belize for collaborative video projects. Ms. Seubert and TIME students have produced projects about Afghanistan for the U.S. Department of State as well as online projects with students in Afghanistan, Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Serbia and Scotland. 

 

John Latimer

GMS Magnet Coordinator / World History Teacher

John Latimer is the GMS Magnet's Coordinator. After serving eight years in the U.S. Navy, he received his bachelor's degree in Political Science from San Jose State University (SJSU) and master's degree in Education at California State University Northridge (CSUN). He started at Cleveland Charter High School in 2006 and teaches World History and AP Psychology. He also serves on the school's Curriculum Council and the board of directors for the Teen International Media Exchange and the International Youth Media Summit. His hobbies include traveling and anything outdoors.

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