MARYSVILLE — It’s a class of 25 students who have to produce a television segment of up to seven minutes in length, 180 days a year, with a 9:15 a.m. deadline every day.
For Richard Walsh’s video production students at the Marysville-Pilchuck High School International School of Communications, it’s all in a day’s work.
“Traditionally, you have teachers grinding away at the front of the classroom,” Walsh said. “I provide the expertise, but the students actually make it work every day.”
By 8:15 a.m., M-PHS TV3 Station Manager Riley Taitingfong is making sure her fellow students are on task at their jobs, which rotate from week to week. By 8:30 a.m., anchors Curtis Zehnder, Nick McGarry and Ray Cancio are rehearsing their lines for the live broadcast at 9:15 a.m., while Tess Raley operates the video board and Brooklyn Grobes fine-tunes the audio.
Walsh points to the digital video board as another example of the students’ independent work, since they raised $10,000 toward its purchase a year ago, with the Marysville Rotary donating an additional $4,000 and the Marysville School District providing a further $6,000. It replaced eight television monitors and six VTR bays with a single multi-feed computer screen, and according to Walsh, it more accurately reflects what his students will be working with in television studios outside of school.
Taitingfong coordinates the different aspects of the students’ broadcasts, from the morning announcements to on-site broadcasts.
“I enjoy getting different messages out to the student body,” said Taitingfong, who expressed pride in a “So You Think You Can Dance” fundraiser that has students bidding on which teachers they want to see dancing on-air. “If you get them involved and engaged, they’ll want to watch.”
While Taitingfong values the leadership skills she’s gained, fellow video production student Kateryna Kushnir simply enjoys mass communication itself.
“We don’t have anything like this in the Ukraine,” said Kushnir, who’s working on a possible Russian news segment for the broadcasts. “I’ve developed an inner world of creativity here.”
