May marks the beginning of graduation season for more than three million high school seniors across the United States but, for many, the road to graduation has not been an easy one. Students often do not understand how their classroom lessons will apply in the real world. Others, who have grown up in a digital world, find learning to be a challenge when faced with traditional textbooks and, instead learn better through hands-on training and the use of technology and digital resources. When there are no solutions in place to help address these challenges, students can fall behind and, with no hope of catching up to their peers, they may make the decision to drop out of school.
The increased use of media and technology in and out of the classroom can help keep youth in school by increasing student engagement, connecting class work to potential career opportunities, and allowing students to learn at their own pace1.
Through American Graduate: Let's Make It Happen, an initiative supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to help communities address the high school dropout crisis, public media stations across the country are working with middle and high schools and local partners on youth media projects.
These projects promote greater academic engagement, teach technical media skills in group settings and provide students with highly marketable 21st Century skills — problem solving, media, information and technology skills, and interpersonal skills—that are essential for success in today's job market.
WHUT in Washington, D.C., in partnership with the National Black Programming Consortium's Public Media Corps, hosts Digital Media Arts Clubs (DMAC) at five D.C. middle and high schools. The clubs meet twice a week, providing digital media production and literacy training to eighth and ninth grade students while simultaneously helping to increase retention rates and academic scores. DMAC students receive hands-on training in video production, social media, and presentation development, as well as instruction on how to operate Flip Cameras and use iMovie, along with other digital media tools.
Production topics include student PSAs, interviews with school leaders, and personal narratives. The clubs share their productions throughout D.C. Public Schools and on WHUT's American Graduate web portal, co-hosted with other local public media stations, WAMU and WETA.
Recently, the Digital Media Arts Club at Anacostia High School received first place honors in the American Graduate Student Film Fest for one of its production called “Be the Change.”
In Albany, N.Y., WMHT collaborated with the A+PLUS Summer Youth Employment Program and AVillage, Inc. to develop the AVillage-WMHT Student Reporter program. For five weeks, students from the South End neighborhood of Albany trained as reporters, learning about the people and issues in their local community from a journalistic perspective. In addition, the students worked directly with WMHT staff to gain basic interviewing, journalism, and media storytelling skills.
During the program, student reporters interviewed a group of diverse subjects, including Albany Mayor Gerald Jennings, other students, and city residents.
The experience of working on a project from start to finish not only gives the students confidence, it has inspired some to pursue journalism as a career.
“One of the girls expressed an interest in pursuing a journalism/communications career and is looking at colleges,” said WMHT Vice President of Education, Katherine P. Jetter. “Prior to the program she was uncertain, but after being involved she felt more certain that she wanted to pursue the communication/journalism field of study.”
Chicago's WTTW partnered with Free Spirit Media (FSM) to bring student voices to the American Graduate initiative and give them experience in the business of media production. As part of the program, WTTW, acting as the client, identified themes for student-produced public service announcements (PSAs). Students, working with FSM instructors generated concepts for the PSAs and presented them to WTTW staff for feedback, suggestions, and production notes. Students also wrote their own scripts with support from a WTTW journalist mentor. Once the scripts were finished, students got behind the camera to film a draft version of the PSA and present it to WTTW. During the presentation, students explained why they made some of their production and artistic decisions. They then used production notes from WTTW to create broadcast-quality versions of their PSAs that were broadcast on WTTW.
According to Carmen Schmidt, Education Outreach Director at WTTW, “This process gave the students involved a real-life experience of how the business of media creation is done. They were not only doing the fun production part, but learning the business process of proposal, revisions, and satisfying a client.”
In addition to producing local American Graduate PSAs, FSM students reported and produced two news packages addressing the dropout crisis as part of PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs.
KACV in Amarillo, Texas, along with their American Graduate community partners Panhandle Twenty/20 and the Amarillo Independent School District, challenged students to take on the dropout crisis with a video contest. A student focus group guided the station in structuring the competition so videos could be produced by groups, in addition to individual students — an idea the station attributes to the success of the contest.
Each 60-second video had an encouraging message to friends and fellow students to stay in school and graduate. KACV received 41 entries from students and groups throughout the Texas panhandle. More than 2,000 votes decided the winners in three different categories: groups, classes and individuals.
The final produced videos were much better than what anyone had expected.
“When the videos were shown at an advertising federation meeting, the messages the students created blew the professionals away,” said Cullen Lutz, KACV Community Engagement Specialist.
The winning videos were professionally produced as public service announcements for broadcast on-air and on the Internet. The videos were also shared with students through the Amarillo Independent School District.
In San Francisco, KQED teamed with the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC), as part of the station's American Graduate initiative, to help students learn and hone their digital skills, including audio engineering, video production and filmmaking. BAVC seeks to give students, ages 14 - 24 years, access to technologies that may not be part of their everyday environments.
In association with KQED's American Graduate outreach, BAVC's advanced video program, called, The Factory, along with the organization's recording program, Bump Records, produced a series of short films and an album that examine the dropout crisis in Oakland. The album, An American Graduate, with the films Stay the Course, Checkmate and There is No Crisis in American Education address issues such as education, student alienation, and incarceration.
According to Chris Runde, the Manager of BUMP Records, the skills the students are learning will help them find work in the future.
“I think that in the current economy especially, we've seen a real emergence of jobs that require really specific skill sets in the technology sector, and there is a need for individuals with the ability to jump in and navigate this world. People who don't have those skills or the access to the training are really being left behind. Access to that kind of training tends to favor people from privileged backgrounds, so I think with the work that we do here, we're really trying to bridge that gap and provide some of those same opportunities for folks who in other cases wouldn't have that access to it.”
KQED has also partnered with other community organizations that allow students to hone their tech skills. Last summer, 14 students were invited to a day-long filmmaking workshop sponsored by KQED, TILT and the Youth Film Lab at the Oakland School of the Arts. Using only Flip cams and camera phones, students shot and edited short films about the dropout crisis and what it means to stay in school and graduate. The films premiered and were screened later that same night.
One day we may hear a story about an Oscar winning director who got his start in one of public media's digital media arts classes, or a Grammy winning producer who learned the trade at BAVC. But more important than discovering the next big talent, these opportunities provide students with essential skills — creativity, problem-solving, team work and communication skills — that are important to success in school and in life.
Learn more about these and other public media stations working with future media producers, journalists and filmmakers through youth media programs here.
1 U.S. Department of Education; Education Week, “Technology in Education,” Sept. 1, 2011; State Educational Technology Directors Association, Transforming Education to Ensure All Students Are Successful in the 21st Century, May 2011.