HSRA Update

My first few weeks at the St. Paul High School for the Recording Arts has gone great so far. I've been working one on one with students who produce a weekly hip-hop radio show for 96.3FM. It's on every Sunday morning at 8AM if anyone ever wants to listen in. So far I've been sharing with the students my background in radio and some of the things I try to do on my show. Also, we've been working on lots of grammatical and speaking errors that the students have been making. Their show isn't produced live, it is pre-recorded and mixed in advance so I have the opportunity to work with them on their language use, pronunciations, etc before the official show airs. Part of the show involves interviewing other people so I've also been working with students on coming up with interesting and diverse questions. After the prep work, I've been helping students one-on-one with the editing of the show on the computer. I'm also in the process of setting up a field-trip for the class so that they can come and tour the Macalester Radio station. One of my main concerns before starting was how to gain the respect of students who were sometimes only a year younger than me, but it hasn't proven to be a problem whatsoever so far. In fact, the relationships with the students I'm working with have formed and grown faster than I expected.

There's been plenty of example of constructivism at work at HSRA so far. The best example is the curriculum of the class. Students take their prior knowledge of english, speaking skills, and computer editing and apply it on their own through experimenting with the show and learning from their mistakes. My student, "Swerve," uses his prior knowledge of speaking skills, etc and conducts interviews all on his own, writing all of the questions and performing the interview as well. He has room to make mistakes, and make discoveries on his own. My other student, "Young Pain," uses his prior knowledge with computer editing, and he applies it in the classroom by editing and mixing the entire show by himself. The teacher is present if he ever needs help, but Young Pain generally works through the show without asking questions, and discovers new things along the way. Everything about the class is extremely hands on, the teacher is simply present to guide and keep the class on task.

I can't wait to keep working with this class, but I'm also hoping to start helping out with some more traditionally academic classes as well.