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Medill Helps Celebrate Media Teens' Graduation

See original release here.

See student work here.

May 18, 2011

By Emma O'Connor

When Medill sophomore Elena Schneider began college, she immediately missed the relationships she had formed while serving as a mentor in a high school community outreach program. So after receiving an e-mail last summer that detailed Medill’s plan for a similar project, Elena jumped at the opportunity to participate. This new project developed into a 22-week program, called Medill Media Teens, aimed at teaching journalism skills to Chicago youth. On Saturday, May 14,Medill Media Teens celebrated the graduation of its first group of media-savvy students.

“I got involved with the program totally out of chance,” Schneider said. “I hoped—and now am sure—that Media Teens was the perfect opportunity to join a program that affects real change and supports positive relationships.”

Medill Media Teens, a collaboration between Medill and the Gary Comer Youth Center, paired 14 students from Chicago high schools with 15 Medill undergraduates for Saturday morning classes about media production and consumption, said Sarahmaria Gomez, the program’s director and an adjunct lecturer at Medill.

Based in Medill’s Downtown Chicago newsroom, the students experimented with video, audio, photography and design. The students, who were all involved in various Comer Center programs, met with media professionals, explored Chicago to capture b-roll and interview tourists, and went on field trips to such sites as Chicago’s NBC affiliate, WMAQ. They worked individually and in groups to produce several videos throughout the year. For the program’s capstone project, the students investigated issues in their community and topics that relate to their future goals.

Through fostering analytical and technical abilities, the program sought to make the students better candidates for jobs and college admissions. By Saturday’s graduation, Gomez said, the students had acquired demonstrable media skills.

“Every student grew positively in an extreme way,” Gomez said. “It goes to show that when you have love and attention, you can just grow so quickly.”

The graduation showcased the students’ finished projects and their relationships with their Medill mentors. During the celebration, mentors and students discussed the friendships they developed.

“When I asked students to speak from their hearts at graduation, they blew me away,” Gomez said. “I realized that they love the program and love what we do. Everybody trusted and befriended and formed really deep relationships.”

“By the time the Media Teens graduation was over, I don’t think anyone in the room had a dry eye,” Medill Dean John Lavine said. “It was moving. It was terrific.”

Gomez said that when she began facilitating the program, her first goal was simply to make it fun, as participants were voluntarily attending Saturday classes during the school year.

While homeschooled junior Taniqua Washington said she stuck with the program because she enjoyed the creative atmosphere, Media Teens also provided additional motivation for the students to show up to class: new video cameras. At the beginning of the program, each student borrowed a Kodak Zi8 video camera to shoot video footage during the week, and those students who attended class every Saturday were able to keep their cameras permanently.

Leslie Johnson, a Gary Comer College Prep sophomore, said he enjoyed working with the video equipment and now hopes to work as an editor or cameraman.

“I feel that others should know about this program and how it could shape their future,” Johnson said.

One thing that truly impressed Lavine was the quality of work displayed by the high school students.

“The best work the teens showed us was, frankly, outstanding,” Lavine said. “The better examples of their writing, videos and multimedia could have been done by college students, and the college students would have been proud of the work.”

Next fall, the first batch of Media Teens graduates will return to further develop their skills, while a new group of students will also enter the program. This will allow the second year students to help teach the new program participants, Gomez said.