Over the past few years, the program has expanded and forged relationships with numerous organizations throughout Cherry Hill.
They were on location when ground was broken on the school’s new turf field.
They’ve filmed numerous promo videos for school events and district initiatives.
They’ve produced multiple public safety videos for the Cherry Hill Police Department and helped spread the Hate Has No Home Here message with Cherry Hill Township.
Cherry Hill High School West broadcasting is more than just your ordinary high school class. The department has cultivated relations with a number of organizations in the township and produced numerous important videos for residents.
When Kwame Morton became principal at Cherry Hill West in 2013, the broadcasting program was a major focus for him. He felt the program had lots of potential and worked with the school’s broadcasting teacher, Steve Ansert, and English teacher and student activities coordinator, Carole Roskoph, to make improvements.
“Our vision is, ultimately, this needs to be an experiential program,” Morton said. “This has to be an opportunity for our kids to go out and gain some real world experience.”
To get ideas on how to build the program, Ansert and Roskoph visited Mainland Regional High School’s broadcasting studio. They brought back ideas on ways to improve Cherry Hill West’s studio as well as the curriculum. Upgrades were made to improve the school’s broadcasting studio and editing equipment.
“We had this studio that was not being utilized, it was being used for storage,” Morton said. “So I began to see the makings and the pieces for this.”
Today, Cherry Hill West has a room with an overhead lighting grid and cameras to film studio programs. Across the hallway, a classroom with several editing suites allows students to work on their projects.
“I was so impressed,” sophomore Kaya Strother said of the Cherry Hill West facilities. “I didn’t think it would be this high quality. I didn’t think all of this would be in a high school broadcasting program.”
Cherry Hill West’s curriculum has Broadcasting I and Broadcasting II classes, but this is just the tip of the iceberg for the program. Broadcasting students have filmed various announcement videos, public service announcements and trailers for the community. Last year, the students filmed the school district’s announcement of a “WE campaign” to unite Cherry Hill East and Cherry Hill West. This year, the students partnered with the township to create a “Hate Has No Home in Cherry Hill” video.
The program’s most prominent partnership may be with the police department. The students have worked on a variety of projects with the police, including a video introducing the department’s body cameras, a short piece on the department’s Lock It or Lose It campaign and, most recently, a video detailing Halloween safety tips.
Police Chief William Monaghan said the partnership has had huge benefits for both the department and the broadcasting students. The police department had been looking to inform residents through social media videos. Working with the broadcasting students allowed them to gain real-world experience through providing videos the police needed for its social media pages.
“It allows the students to work on real-life scenarios,” Monaghan said. “It’s not a tabletop exercise. We’ll work with the class on an idea of how to get a message across.”
“I really like working with the police,” sophomore Vincent Gollotto said. “I like when we do things for the community. I feel like West broadcasting has a voice for the community in Cherry Hill.”
Beyond the videos, the partnership has also given the students and police officers an opportunity to interact and develop meaningful relationships.
“I believe it’s a national model,” Morton said of the police department’s relationship with the broadcasting program. “Here’s a police department that’s come together with residents, with children, and showed a different side and worked closely with us.”
Cherry Hill West has also created a partnership with Clara Barton Elementary School, located a little more than one mile away. Once a month, a small group of fifth-grade students from the school take center stage as newscasters. The students team with their older Cherry Hill West peers to film a video about the past month’s news at their school. The video is later edited, broadcast at the school and posted on YouTube.
“You have a camera in front of you and you’re talking, it’s really cool,” fifth grader Justin Chevalier said.
“It made me feel smart,” fifth grader Maddy Schaible added.
Clara Barton Principal Sean Sweeney described the partnership as the perfect opportunity for his school’s fifth-grade students to work with some of their older peers and learn from them.
“The high school West broadcasting students are fantastic,” Sweeney said. “They’re super accommodating, they’re great with our fifth graders, they’re peer models for them, and they teach them how this all works.”
“It greatly sparks their interest in this form of technology, being able to create their own movies and create their own backgrounds and effects,” Sweeney added.
The fifth-grade students’ writing abilities, public speaking and work ethic have impressed the Cherry Hill West students.
“They’re really taking advantage of it,” Strother said of the Clara Barton students. “They’re also really good at speaking. It’s really impressive.”
While the West-Barton partnership may be molding the next generation of high school broadcasting students, a number of the students at Cherry Hill West have big dreams as well. Their experience in broadcasting has encouraged them to look toward broadcasting and film as a potential career.
“I definitely want to go to college and become a major in TV production, movie production or something like that,” Gollotto said.
Many of Cherry Hill West broadcasting’s videos can be found at its YouTube page, www.youtube.com/channel/UCG3t5fKfBXkxRIrvZQ7RIEg.
