STUDENTS ON AIR

by Drew Diener
About 9:40 a.m. on a Thursday morning in early September, a handful of Prescott High School students began to trickle into the Badger Media Studio, home of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Arizona’s Multimedia Studios program, a partnership between the BGCCAZ and the Prescott Unified School District.
The students were preparing to produce and livestream the morning announcements. Multimedia Studios program director Josh Orlando and PHS media arts teacher Robyn Bryce buzzed around the two-room studio giving directions and testing equipment as the students took their places behind cameras, in front of computer screens and at the news desk.
Everett Sims, III, a PHS junior, delivered the announcements for the first time. Sitting at the news desk minutes before the announcements went live, Sims – smartly clad in a lime green button-down shirt and a navy blue sports coat – rehearsed his lines and tried to maintain his cool as he prepared to make his on-camera debut. Meanwhile, his veteran co-host, Mason Pennington, also a PHS junior, slipped into a gray sports coat and tried to commit to memory a student’s name he would announce during the broadcast. Behind the cameras, a trio of students prepared to film the newscast and cue the hosts, while in the adjacent room, a team of students manned computers and listened to Bryce’s last-minute instructions.
And then, all of a sudden, it was show time. Sims and Pennington appeared on television screens in classrooms throughout campus and spent the next few minutes delivering the day’s school news. The show went off without a hitch. It was a professional-quality production delivered by a team of high school students who are gaining life-changing vocational and interpersonal skills that will help them thrive in their future endeavors.
“This is a like a real studio,” Bryce said. “It’s a real-world experience for these kids. This is challenging work for these kids, and when we do things that are challenging, we become better people.”
Established in May 2017, the Multimedia Studios program is one of a number of programming efforts by the BGCCAZ to extend its reach beyond its Prescott and Prescott Valley clubhouses. In September, the BGCCAZ opened an after-school program at Glassford Hill Middle School in Prescott Valley, and in October it will open a teen center in Chino Valley.
For more information on how you can help the BGCCAZ impact the lives of our community’s youth, visit the BGCCAZ online at bgccaz.org or call 928-776-8686.
Drew Diener is a local attorney and a member of the Board of Directors of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Arizona.