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WILL’s Youth Media Workshop (YMW) received
the 2006 Campus Award for Excellence in Public Engagement Team
Award from the Office of the Chancellor at the University of
Illinois.
The YMW is an after-school program that gives media access,
media tools and life skills to African-American students in area
public schools by teaching them how to create, broadcast, market
and preserve for the public’s use radio and television
documentaries made from oral history interviews with local
African-American residents. The YMW is currently working with
students from Franklin Middle School and Urbana High School.
Franklin teacher, Shameem Rakha, and 8th grade student, Amaris
Bailey, wrote letters of support that secured the award for the
YMW.
Amaris writes, in an excerpt from her letter:
“The Youth Media Workshop is a great program. I like it because
it is a hands-on program. The community is our classroom. We use
microphones and digital flash card recorders and Photoshop and
editing equipment and cameras to preserve the oral history of
local African-American elders. We’re going to turn their
interviews into a radio program. We take field trips to places
such as the Champaign County Historical Archives, the DuSable
Museum in Chicago and local people’s homes. We even helped build
a low-power radio station in Urbana, WRFU, and spoke on the air
the first night of its broadcast. “
Ms. Rakha writes, in her letter:
“Because of the local history the YMW students are collecting, I
have been able to create a new course for my 8th grade honors
reading class on the study of the Civil Rights Movement. In this
unit, I use source materials from previous Youth Media Workshop
documentaries and interviews. I also used downloads from other
WILL-created programs such as an interview about Sundown towns
with scholar James Loewen. One of my students, who is also a
participant in the YMW, researched the history of Sundown towns
in Illinois and presented this information at our open house on
the Civil Rights Movement. This same student taught a lesson on
this topic to her social studies class. Another student did his
research on the desegregation of Champaign’s public schools in
1968 using material gathered by students from year two of the
YMW. The integration of YMW material into the regular curriculum
is a direct result of the roots that are forming from the
workshop and starting to take hold in our school.”
For the past three years, YMW co-directors, WILL’s Kimberlie
Kranich and Innovative Ed’s Dr. Will Patterson, have worked
directly with African-American students in public schools using
media production to provide opportunities for them to build
mastery of life skills, boost self-esteem, increase social and
academic performance and contribute information to the public
dialogue.
Also on the team are Leon Dash, U of I journalism professor and
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter; Dave Dickey, WILL-AM 580
reporter; Amy Aidman, U of I assistant research professor; and
Walt Harrington, U of I journalism professor.
The YMW is collaboration between WILL AM-FM-TV, the College of
Communications at UIUC and Patterson, associate director of the
African-American Studies and Research Program at UIUC and
founder of Innovative Ed Consulting, Inc., an Urbana-based
educational programming, multimedia marketing and action
research company.
For information on WILL meteorologist
Ed Kieser's award
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