Journalism coming to more schoolsA $500,000 grant will enable 24 city high schools to run media clubs, aided by professionals and interns.
By Martha Woodall
Oh blessed grants, thank you for helping run media clubs. Let’s see the quote from the horse’s mouth:
“Officials from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation today are scheduled to announce a $500,000 grant to the School District of Philadelphia and the Prime Movers at George Washington University in Washington to establish Prime Movers/Philadelphia.”
Hah NCLB, you wretch, victory is not emanate! People still believe in electives and extra curricular activities. What this grant will do is give a rebirth to after school media programs. Also, this grant will be bringing professional journalists to help teach high school students about the aspects of journalism. Well ghee-whiz, this is a pretty sweet deal; after school activities with journalist and interns… and it is free!
Dorothy Gilliam, founder and director of Prime Movers at George Washington University states a very interesting statistic in this article. She says that:
“It is a national problem because . . . about 40 percent of the 17,000 high schools have no student media. The Knight Foundation has made an extensive commitment to getting [student] media started nationally.”
Let’s stop for a second and think about this, roughly 8,500 high schools nationally have media programs. Let’s stop and think again and pose a question. How many of these 8,500 schools, are well off Urban, Suburb or Upper Class schools? I would suspect probably most of them. Well, that leaves the others high and dry.
This is something that really got me going in a happy way, but also in a sad way. With the funds, computers, digital cameras, software…oh and teacher training! YES I say…YES! That means there are teachers willing to spend their time after school to further learning. The thing that gets to me though is how all these other schools that are lacking funds may never get the chance to experience this phenomenon unless they have grants.
Here are the specs for what will happen for these students that participate.
“The clubs will meet twice a week and each will be assigned two Temple interns. Professional journalists from area media, including KYW-AM (1060), NBC10, CBS3, the Philadelphia Tribune, Philadelphia Weekly, and The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, will spend 90 minutes with students weekly.”
Now, what will this do for the students writing? I have a few hypotheses about this. If students have funding and professionals helping them learn and create meaningful journalism then students will have many tools including the writing process in the belt of knowledge. Another is If students enjoy writing then they may continue into journalism or writing as a profession.
Overall I hope that the nation can see the good that thing that is happening in Philadelphia with its after school media club. It would be great if low S.E.S schools could get grants for after school media programs. Maybe it could give a hope to students that don’t write so well, want to find a way to express themselves in a medium, or are simply looking for some extra fun.
1 response so far ↓
1
kempemat
// Nov 29, 2007 at 8:27 pm
Eric, this article does the same for me as it does for you: it gives me a sense of hope for the future of education, but at the same time, it makes me upset. This is great, students are going to be given an opportunity that will last with them for the rest of their lives. They will learn so much about writing that will help them in their further schooling, and someday in their careers. It is so great to hear that people are willing to take the time to help these students, and it is great that the money is being given to such a good cause. But as you state, what about everybody else? What do the kids who don’t get the money and the after school program do? What will they have to put on their college application or job resume? Yet again, some students move ahead in life, and others get pushed back down. As future educators, we will either be teaching in schools that will have the available funding to pay for programs such as this, or we will be in the schools that struggle to buy classroom supplies. What will we do if we teach in the latter example? Give up and wait for that job opening in the rich district, or make a difference where we are? It will take time, money, energy, and a whole lot of effort, but we have had the opportunity to be educated beyond high school, and have the ability to make a difference. Good post Eric, it raised a lot of issues for me.
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