Teachers share skills, find community at 2024 SRL Teacher Workshop
Arlington, VA —30 educators from across the country gathered in the Washington, D.C. area for the annual PBS News Student Reporting Labs Teacher Workshop. The three-day training was held in late July at WETA/PBS News headquarters.
Participating educators learned skills in video and audio journalism through hands-on workshops led by SRL staff and returning educators, including workshops on camera, video editing, podcasting, motion graphics, scripting, interviewing and using mobile devices for video production.
“You get to meet people who teach the same thing you do, which we never get to do in broadcast journalism because we’re usually by ourselves,” said Krista McKim, who teaches at Rockville High School in Rockville, Maryland. “We get to meet other people who are just as into it as we are, and share ideas and then have the experts from PBS News Student Reporting Labs here to help us take it up a notch.”
Putting their new skills to the test, educators worked in small groups to film interviews with each other and edit short videos discussing the current challenges they face as teachers, how they manage teaching in a polarized political environment, and what they’re excited for going into the new school year.
This year’s workshop also included a live recording of a new episode of the Teacher Reporting Labs podcast led by co-host Mike Conrad and educator Dr. Sequoyah Wharton.
Dennis Madrigal, a Francis Polytechnic High School teacher in Los Angeles, Calif., emphasized the importance of sharing and learning from other teachers focused on video and audio journalism.
“Opportunities like PBS News SRL have been huge,” he said, “I can just pick people’s brains, like, how do you teach this? What do you do in this classroom? How are you approaching this subject? And that’s always been really huge for me, because I learn so much from other people.”
Teachers also learned how to work with Student Reporting Labs this school year, including diving into StoryMaker prompts, resources and support available from the Student Reporting Labs team and its partners.