Producer Dianna Douglas will help 四虎影院 bring the voices of North Texas students to the radio and to the web through our new project, the 四虎影院 Yearbook. We鈥檙e exploring the forces in teenagers鈥� lives that affect how they perform in high school, and whether they finish.
This project starts in Richard Perez鈥檚 Audio Video Production class. He鈥檚 teaching his students the basics for a career in media.
鈥淲e鈥檙e trying to give them as many skills as they can get, early on, so they can enter the job market or have options when you graduate.鈥�
Perez teaches at Polytechnic High School in Fort Worth, and his students run a radio station, make short movies, and deliver the morning news. They also create public service announcements on hot topics, like texting while driving, staying in school, online bullying.
In the 8 years that he鈥檚 taught, Perez has learned that his students鈥� creations are sometimes a window into their souls.
鈥淪ome of the girls that were doing PSAs about getting pressured by their boyfriends ended up getting pregnant,鈥� he said. 鈥淚鈥檓 looking more closely at their scripts now to see what they鈥檙e writing about, to see if there鈥檚 something they鈥檙e really going through.鈥�
The hours of content they produce in these classes are also a new way to communicate for his teenage students, a group that is notoriously reticent to talk.
Jared Hopkins, a senior at Dubiski Career High School in Grand Prairie, says he鈥檚 learned important skills for his future career in his AV classes.
鈥淚 like AV because as a child I wanted to be an actor,鈥� he said. While he鈥檚 expanded his career plans to include media production more broadly, he says it鈥檚 been a 鈥渃ool鈥� training program. 鈥淗ow many other high school students can say I actually made a movie?鈥�
Dubiski feels like a different world from Polytechnic. Every student has a laptop, and the students keep to a professional dress code. But they cover the same curriculum in the AV classes as Polytechnic.
His teacher, Dee McCown, says each of the projects in her class teaches the students a new way of speaking.
鈥淢ost people have something to say, they have something that they want to get out there, and teenagers are no different,鈥� she said.
鈥淧utting out a video or a .gif reaches not only their peers, but maybe explains something to an audience that they don鈥檛 think understands them.鈥�
Last year, when she was teaching at Red Oak High School, a group of her students creating an animated story about a boy who grows up without his father. When they entered it into a state film festival, she learned from one mother why her son had put so much emotion into it.
鈥淪he said when I first hear this, it gave me goose bumps because this story is very much like his story,鈥� McCown said. 鈥漈his gave them something to talk about that maybe they didn鈥檛 want to talk about.鈥�
This fall we鈥檒l be hearing more from Dee McCown鈥檚 and Richard Perez鈥檚 students, and other teenagers throughout North Texas with the 四虎影院 yearbook. While they learn the skills for media careers, we鈥檒l be listening in to see what they choose to tell us about their lives.
More at
