Now Hear This

By Caroline An, Staff Writer

Producing and editing a three-minute radio segment turned out to be more difficult than Madiha Khawaja expected. Three months after embarking on the project, Khawaja, a 10th-grader at Waverly High School, and two students have nearly completed tweaking and fiddling with their segment on drunken driving. Soon it will be aired on a the Radio 626, an online youth radio station.

The students also produced two other segments - on global warming and teens' relationships with their parents. After listening to interview loops countless times, Khawaja said she noticed one thing: "Everyone says `um' a lot," she said. Carlos Valenzuela, an 11th-grader at Blair IB Magnet, said he make "eight takes" of his introduction to the drunk driving piece before he got it right. "I tried to ad-lib, but it was hard," he said.

Broadcast over the Internet, Radio 626 is a partnership among Waverly High School, Blair and Pasadena City College. It was initiated by the Pasadena's city public health department, which paid for a computer and other recording devices used by the students. Radio 626 is designed to help students find their voice regarding issues while providing a platform for their views, program officials said.

The partnership is in its second year, with two instructors this year guiding nine Waverly and Blair students through the steps of editing and producing a piece for radio broadcast. Scott Carter, an instructor in radio at PCC and a radio veteran, provides technical support to the high school students.

Once a week, the nine students meet at Waverly School to eat, chat and make incremental progress on their radio pieces. While the three-month program is fun for now, the students said they would not pursue radio production as a career. Some students sheepishly admitted that the experience would look good on their college resumes.

Margaret Lopez, one of the instructors, said she was amazed at how quickly high school students picked up concepts and confidently interviewed sources for their segments. Last year, a group of students produced a radio piece on strangers, interviewing people they stopped on Colorado Boulevard. Although she tagged along, "they didn't need my help," Lopez said.

To hear Radio 626, log on to: http://www.thewaverlyschool.org/radio626/index.html

caroline.an@sgvn.com(626) 578-6300, Ext. 4494

www.insidesocal.com/hallwaymonitor

This article reprinted with courtesy of the San Gabriel Valley Newsgroup