SPJ Field Trip Yields Lessons For Teacher From Two Groups of Students

BIRMINGHAM–  It’s the last of three days of visits to Birmingham’s Woodlawn neighborhood for the Woodlawn Summer Academy.

This day was different as I journeyed from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham with students from the University’s Society of Professional Journalists chapter, for which I serve as co-adviser.

As a faculty-student team, we did a workshop for the 20 ninth graders.

After working with my own team and with the ninth graders, the lessons were plentiful for the teacher on both levels– with College students and high school students.

1. Impressions and Experiences of College Students can sometimes surprise you

As we arrived at the building down the street from Woodlawn High School where our sessions were taking place, one the UA students indicated how important it was to be careful going to Woodlawn and to go WITH someone.

Suddenly, I was concerned that I would be criticized for taking University students from the Society of Professional Journalists chapter on a community visit to an “unsafe neighborhood.”

The same student later in the day told me that the student’s grandmother had attended Woodlawn High School.  So, there was an indirect connection to University of Alabama  of which I was totally unaware.

2.  Provide iMovie and pocket camera instruction? — maybe NOT.  

One of the UA students who had never taken our multimedia class was able to show the high school students how to view video in the program that’s part Apple’s iLife 2009 suite without ANY guidance from me.

So maybe video editing software is intuitive?  At least when it comes to a program like iMovie, I may not need to stress out about making sure I’ve demonstrated how to do everything with the software.

Minutes later, I found one of the rising ninth graders taking, selecting and deleting photos with the Kodak zi8 pocket video camera– again without having ever been shown HOW to do it.

These (College and high school students) are digital natives — and their experience is totally different from mine or other adults who would need a “lesson” before using the hardware or software. 

3.  “We can take notes on our cell phone”

So I’m providing instruction on doing video stand-ups and giving students background information that I would normally have written down on a pad.

They didn’t have paper handy.  So, these ninth graders pulled out their cell phones and started typing notes as text messages.

One of the young men decided to use his phone as a makeshift teleprompter.  He typed out his standup and had a friend hold his phone under the camera lens.

This picture shows an earlier iteration of this cell phone/teleprompter experiment (beside the camera).

I haven’t yet viewed the video that will be edited for the standup, but I can’t wait to see what this final product looks like.  It was my first time using a cell phone  in doing a video standup

My lesson for the ninth graders may have been how to do a standup for on-camera presentation.   But, the lesson for me, the teacher– be familiar with what students coming into your class who LIVE on cell phones can do.

I’m never been a big cell phone person.  But, I’m quickly realizing if I am going to have this generation of students showing up in my journalism class in the next four years (or at our high school workshop sooner than that), I have to change my method of instruction.

4. Eating lunch IS a big deal

Yesterday before our recording studio visit, one of the students from Woodlawn Academy asked the program director, Chip Brantley,  if we were eating lunch at school.

I thought ‘why is that an important question now? Who cares about lunch?  You’re going to a recording studio.  That’s the big news of the day.’

Today I visited the lunchroom at Woodlawn High School and see why our catered lunch of pulled pork barbecue and barbecue chicken, baked beans and potato salad WAS indeed a big deal.

Let’s just say the lunch menu in the cafeteria today was reminiscent of those days when I would BRING my lunch back in my hometown of Richmond, Virginia.

No offense to the cafeteria staff at Woodlawn.  The soft tacos, toss salad and corn on the menu today were not exactly what I was expecting for lunch.

SPJ Chapter Leaders Laura Metcalf, Matt Conde (center), and Daniel Sparkman were the team that made the Woodlawn Experience work.

A MEMORABLE WEEK

I can’t thank my colleague Chip Brantley enough for inviting us to work with the Woodlawn Summer Academy.   I know, I personally can say these last three days have done FAR MORE for me as an Alabama transplant from Virginia than I’m sure I could have done for the students at Westlawn.

This is why institutions like the University of Alabama HAVE to reach out to connect with students, especially when they are in communities in our backyard.

When I began this morning’s presentation, I polled the rising ninth graders about their college plans. Almost all of them raised their hands indicating they are looking to pursue a degree after they graduate four years from now.

Two of these ninth grade students already have plans to major in engineering, another psychology and a fourth student has plans to be pre-law.    These hopes and dreams WILL COME TRUE because of efforts like the Woodlawn Academy.

I have a feeling this is NOT the last time I’ll be journeying to Birmingham’s Woodlawn neighborhood.

Birmingham Students’ Talent Comes Through With Recording Studio Visit

BIRMINGHAM–  The second day of my experience working with the Woodlawn Summer Academy here on the east side of Birmingham was punctuated by a visit to a recording studio.

From poetry to song, the 20 students in the program took a sample of their creativity to the microphone.  Some, who might not have thought of themselves as a singer at least ACTED like they could sing when they got in front of a microphone.

The goal today was to provide a real-world experience with the process producing a project that reflected great writing and allowed one’s talents to shine.

While many of the students were recording their own prepared projects, I took a half-dozen of them aside to another recording booth and worked with them in preparing elements for radio-style news reports.

I was amazed at how much I learned from these rising ninth graders.   Some who thought they had the “talent” got nervous when the meter turned red and they were recording.

We talked about ways to improve one’s delivery and even the idea that some people think they just can’t talk the right way for radio.

Best of all, today’s visit was a warm-up for what I would will experience when I have the full group for a special video/digital presentation on Wednesday.

Panhandler Encounter Highlights Day 1 Experience

BIRMINGHAM–  It’s Fourth of July, but I have just had an interesting experience conducting an interview outside of the Woodlawn High School in East Birmingham.

The goal today was to gather some “Fresh” video that could be used in a video exercise for the students.

I met my interview subject at the school at the appointed time.

We set up the camera and proceeded to conduct the on-camera interview.

Suddenly about two minutes into the recording, the woman I was interviewing looked away to someone behind me.

I looked back and a man with a dog was there.  He asked “Excuse me, you from the cable company.  I’m looking for a job.”

When I explained that I was not from Birmingham and that I didn’t work for the cable company, he proceeded to ask if I could spare some change for him to get some food.

When I declined, he walked on down the street.

The woman, who went to Woodlawn High School explained that is very common here in the East Birmingham community.

The interview went well, at least I thought.

When I returned to Tuscaloosa, I discovered the windy conditions had seriously affected the production quality of my video.

But,  perhaps there was something we could salvage from the video.

Maybe the lesson learned on this first day was NOT about the interview, but the residents in this community in which I was a visitor.

Final Preparations Under way for This Week’s Birmingham-area Writing Academy Visit

Doing summer programs for high school students to get them excited about journalism has become a norm for me.

After all, I attribute my initial decision to go into journalism to  a similar summer workshop experience almost 25 years back in Richmond, Va. on the campus of Virginia Commonwealth University.

(In fact, someone from the Urban Journalism Workshop was kind enough to remind me about that by posting our workshop photo on Facebook recently)

We do two such events here on the University of Alabama each year– the Alabama Scholastic Press Association Long Weekend and the Multicultural Journalism Workshop.   Both are established programs, the latter of which has won two national awards.

Back in the mid 1980s as a rising 11th grader, I participated in the Urban Journalism Workshop, which was sponsored by the Dow Jones News Fund.

This week I’m excited to try a new model — where I’ll be going TO the students’ community instead of the students coming to us on a college campus.

The place I’ll be going– Birmingham, Ala. in a community known as Woodlawn.

What will be different this week is that we are working with younger students (rising 9th graders) in the place where they are attending school–Woodlawn High School, on the east side of Alabama’s largest city.

The Woodlawn Summer Academy focuses on creative writing, digital literacy and community engagement.  All the students who complete the academy will get a netbook to have as they start their high school careers.

The academy is a one of probably too few bright spots in the news for a school that often makes the headlines for the not-so-good things that are happening there.

Despite its history in educating thousands in East Birmingham,  Woodlawn went on lockdown,  a student was shot and another student charged with carrying an unloaded gun– all during the last school year.

With a reported 43 percent poverty rate, the Woodlawn community was described in one published report earlier this year as a place where there was a “need to restore dignity and bring hope”

Certainly, one or two visits for a writing academy can’t deliver dignity and hope at once.

But, an encounter with students like those in the Writing Academy at Woodlawn High School can make a difference, not only for the students but also the visitor who can learn just as much from the experience.

I’ve already met and worked with two of the students in the academy as most of them made the trip from Birmingham to Tuscaloosa last month for the ASPA Long Weekend.  Over the course of two days, the students got a healthy dose of instruction in writing, editing, photojournalism and yes (my area) video.

Like most of the students, Drec Magwood and Nicholas Collins, were really quiet at the beginning of the weekend.  But, by the end of the second day, I could see the personalities coming out.

These guys did a great job reporting their stories on a television set in front of the lights and cameras at WVUA-TV here on the University of Alabama campus.

At last month's workshop at University of Alabama, Nicholas Collins listened intently as WVUA-TV's Daniel Sparkman explained how to do on-camera standups.

Armed with the experience from the video track of the Long Weekend,  Magwood and  Collins will be the leaders as we help the other students learn how to tell stories like those in Woodlawn using moving images.

My thanks to University of Alabama Professor Chip Brantley for inviting me and some of my UA journalism students to participate in the academy.

It should be a great week.    I’ll be writing updates about my experience “Working with Woodlawn” for the next few days.