Student-driven media class, You Tube channel a growing production

A new student-initiated class at the Lincoln School District this year has started a YouTube channel and creates a school-related news broadcast every two weeks.

In April 2019, Sage Kamps and Jaken Shelton, then juniors, attended Journalism Day at the University of Montana with English teacher Philip Reed. Based on what they learned, they proposed that Lincoln students create a media class to make a regular broadcast with school news.

When Laura Allen-Bullis took on the class, the students worked with her to design it for this school year.

"I think when it's a student-driven class, they take more accountability in their learning," Allen-Bullis said.

New episodes are usually released every other Thursday and are available on the school website, Facebook and the Lincoln Lynx News YouTube channel.

"They're based around one central theme," Shelton said. The most recent episode, released Feb. 13, is all about love.

At the start of the two weeks it takes to complete a broadcast Allen-Bullis works with the students to pick topics for that episode.

"Then we all disperse and work on different pieces. The first two-three days, we work on script writing," Kamps said.

Each student works on specific segments to ensure the broadcast runs smoothly, and as the class has developed, some of those roles have changed. Kamps credits Allen-Bullis with working to find what students are passionate about and making room for that in the class.

Shelton and Kamps anchor the show, write scripts and do the Cafe´ Convos segment, which is popular with students throughout the school, especially the younger ones. Shelton also films, traveling to attend all the school's away games and getting footage for the end of the year sports film, which the media class is responsible for compiling.

Each broadcast has original artwork for the segments, completed by Maya Whittenberg and Makenzie Storey. Alle Langlois writes sports scripts and films Whittenberg's sports segments. Joseph Corrigan works on sports scripts and has a new segment called Crafty Corner, which highlights Minecraft. Damion Birkholz is an editor for the show along with Ryan Greenwood, who also does the weather segment. Ivy Corrigan does the Mr. R's Mysteries segment and movie reviews.

The broadcast team works hard to connect the school and the community more, with the hope that each episode will let both audiences learn more about each other. Allen-Bullis usually provides a copy of the newspaper for students to learn about community events.

"We go from the paper quite a lot. Most of the main stories we report on we're learning about for the first time," said Kamps. "We work hard to integrate community events and plug fundraisers. Getting it out there is our biggest hurdle. We wish more of the community watched it and had access to it."

Since the first episode, the students have gained access to new tools, like a green screen which allows them to digitally change the background of segments to reflect the episode's theme. They also worked with an ESPN contact of Allen-Bullis's to get tips for filming and looking less stiff on camera.

"It's a big learning process to sound interesting when you talk," said Kamps.

Because of scheduling, the class was only available to sophomores and seniors this year, but Allen-Bullis hopes to make it available to more students next year. She's already started introducing some of the media class concepts to the 6th graders, as well, and they're excited for the opportunity to participate in the class when they get to high school.

The students' biggest hope for the class next year is that the broadcast continues, growing and getting better.

"I really look forward to watching it next year and to seeing the new anchors," said Shelton.