SPECIAL SECTION | SEPTEMBER 15-28, 2017
Fall 2017
EDUCATION GUIDE
High school TV: Student broadcasters link local schools to the world
A: North Springs Charter High School student Amari Mosby, right, interviews Hanna Quillen. KATE AWTREY
B: Westminster Schools students William Turton and Bennett Porson broadcast from Ireland in August 2016. The Westminster varsity football team traveled to Dublin to play in the American Football Classic. SPECIAL
C: At Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School, Hollis Brecher, left, and Faith Wright broadcast from the studio while Jack Wood and Katie Smith work behind the scenes. SPECIAL
A BY DONNA WILLIAMS LEWIS The AV Tech lab at North Springs Charter High School crackled with creative energy on a recent afternoon as students produced stories for their biweekly news show. Arnardo Vargas, 18, worked on an intro and ending for his video featuring the school’s Spartans football players. Seniors Jaylan McDonald and Paris Talbert searched apps for “positive” background music for their New Teacher segment. Senior Matan Berman spliced video for his feature, “Stereotypical Students,” and Amari Mosby, 16, searched among the six editing rooms for equipment to film an interview about last spring’s school trip to Spain, Portugal and Morocco. Local high schools increasingly are becoming broadcasting and filmmaking breeding grounds in a state with a booming film industry.
Students are live streaming assemblies, plays, holiday pageants and concerts and producing features that will be emailed, played on closed circuit television systems, or posted on Facebook, YouTube channels, school websites and streaming networks. Relatives can get great views of graduations from across the country. (Check out The Westminster Schools’ 2016 graduation on YouTube.) Parents don’t have to agonize over missing their kids’ sporting events. They can watch them on their phones. Westminster sophomore Turner Cravens knows first-hand how parents rely on WCAT, the school’s student-run online TV station. He recalled dealing with a dad who was worried about whether the station definitely was going to cover a basketball game he couldn’t attend. See HIGH on page 12
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INNOVATION Mount Vernon’s ‘school within a school’ tackles real-world projects
LUNCH MONEY School districts develop policies for unpaid meal bills
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