Coleman Armes
Staff Writer
On May 13, the Emerging Media and Communications Academy celebrated its first year on a high note with the EMAC Showcase. This showcase encompassed all the aspects and skills the students had learned over the year.
After long and hard work over every aspect of the event it was their chance to show people from the community what they had learned along with important topics facing teens.
“There has never been this much preparation for media students,” EMAC director Irma Kennedy said. “It’s always been isolated to one thing. This brings everything together to create a common goal, they learned to put an event together.”
The students were split up into groups and could choose any current event topic they wanted to investigate. The topics were presented under three main ideas: mistreatment and abuse, health and teen issues. The goal of the students was to bring awareness to these serious problems and how people can help.
The kids worked on the presentations for the past four six week grading periods rotating in the following areas: photography, video, reporting and advertising. This was an opportunity to survey the different areas of media.
For photography, the students made a photo gallery about their topic, for video they put together a public service announcement, when it came to reporting they created an 800-word report with a layout and design and lastly they made press kit and movie poster for advertising.
The students did not just create a project; they planned the entire showcase. There was a VIP committee responsible for making sure the important guests had top quality service and a concession committee responsible for the food being served at the event. The schedule committee planned when what would happen and logistics made sure everyone arrived safely and without any other problems.
The big night took place in the Coppell High School commons and the students were finally ready to present. The commons were packed with parents, teachers, administration, school board members and friends. With so much preparation for such an important there were many nerves.
The night started with the PSAs on mistreatment and abuse, and then went to health and then teen issues. After that followed the awards ceremony ending with the award for the best overall product. This award went to the product over academic stress, a very big problem in many students’ lives today.
“I was so nervous but after the showcase I felt so relieved and just sat back and was happy we accomplished something this great,” EMAC freshman Killian Bresnahan said.
EMAC freshman Kristin Anderson agreed.
“After the EMAC Showcase I felt relieved,” Anderson said. “I was happy with all the work but also proud of my group and what we put into the product.”
Of course this could have not been put together without the help and teaching from the EMAC staff.
“We could have never done this without the team of teachers we have,” Kennedy said. “This is a unique team of teachers who have each other’s back working hard for the success of each student I am so proud of them and the students.”
After the first year you could say EMAC had much success and the students should be very skilled in all things concerning media by the time they graduate.
