Newark Day Five - Guests and hard work ahead

Today was the last day that we had guests scheduled to visit us. They were introduced by an alumni of two Write on Sports camps who was visiting for the day. We talked about his choices for college, for potential careers, and various sports issues (One question he posed: Is T.O. a first ballot hall of famer?)

We were joined by Bill Ard, former left guard for the New York Giants and Green Bay Packers

and Stephen Baker, former wide receiver for the New York Giants. This is the second year Stephen Baker has visited the camp.




Both players talked about how much playing for the Giants meant to them, and their love of football more generally.

As usual, students first engaged in a general question and answer session.












Students were interested in the players' careers before football, what it felt like to play, and what they have been doing since their careers ended.

After this, students moved into Locker Room mode.  The wrinkle today was that students were working with the flip cameras.

 

Students had to manage being respectful while still getting their questions out. At one point Bill Ard looked at a student who had been sheepishly trying to catch his attention and noted, "You gotta go for it!"

Students spent the rest of the day revising their choice of spot stories, and then planning for their print and video features. 

Here is a student is thinking it through

and then getting it down on paper. 

One week completed, and four drafts done. The challenge next week will be revising and reworking these pieces into publishable stories. There will be times when this work will be challenging, and I'm sure there will be times when frustration is in the air, but in the end I'm sure the students will be happier with their finished products. Even when you enjoy writing, it can be hard work.

Newark Day Four - A guest and digging in on projects

Chris Broussard was a guest at the camp today. He is a Senior Writer for ESPN the Magazine, an NBA columnist for ESPN.com, and an NBA analyst for the ESPN network. This is the second year in row that Chris has visited us. Fresh off breaking the LeBron James story, Chris was able to talk about how he gets his job done when a big story is happening - many nights with next to no sleep, plenty of phone calls to his various sources, and an ability to separate his emotions from the job he has to do as a reporter.

We watched a video of Chris talking to Vince Carter, conducted a short model interview, and then turned the floor over the students.  Students asked him about his decision to become a journalist, if there were stories he regretted having written (answer: no), and what the biggest story was he ever worked on (answer: the most recent series of stories about LeBron James and the Miami Heat.)

After the open question and answer period, the students went into Locker Room mode to get the quotes and answers they wanted.

Chris reiterated some of his key themes: you need to study hard, act responsibly, and keep your eyes on the larger picture. He noted that the decisions and actions that students take at this point of their lives will have lasting ramifications, and that they don't want to look back at this time and think about the opportunities that they missed or threw away.

The audience was definitely listening.

Later in the afternoon students got to work on their big projects - print features for the collection and video stories. Print began by brainstorming ideas, narrowing them down, and refining the pitch - why somebody would be interested in reading the story. Once they had a sense of their topic, students started to do background research.

Working with a graphic organizer, students first write down what they think they know about their topic,  then go about confirming those assertions. In the process, the students note any misconceptions they had, new pieces of information they have gained, and what kind of questions they have now.

This student below is working on a story about cheerleading.

In the other group, students started working on their video projects. As with the print feature, they have to narrow down their ideas, this time in pairs.

These students are working on a idea about competitive cooking, which I'm looking forward to.


















This student has already started to draft a storyboard that will detail each scene - what questions will be addressed, any narration, titles, music, and what images might be necessary. This story is about the fans' perspective on the rivalry between LeBron James and Kobe Bryant. Many students working on the storyboard noticed for themselves how they really need to identify what questions each part of the video is going to address.

Here a student argues for his vision.

Newark Day Three - Jackals Game

Today we went to see the New Jersey Jackals, as we have done for most camps. They are always kind enough to allow us to interview players and coaches before the game. The students prepped by looking over statistics and rosters for the Jackals and their opponents today (The Brockton Rox). It was sunny, hot and a bit humid when we arrive.

Today we spoke with Paul Fagan and Chris Vasami. They are both starting pitchers who joined the Jackals about two weeks ago. They were previously with the Newark Bears, a team that plays in the Atlantic League. Since they were not pitching today they had time to field questions from the students.

Paul is on the left in the white shirt, and Chris in on the right in the black shirt.














Students were interested in their daily routines, their workout habits, and what they think of the Jackals since they are new to the team. Students also asked questions about their life outside of baseball and what they think they might do when their careers are over. Hopefully that won't happen anytime soon, since both Chris and Paul are striving to make it to the major leagues.

Once the interview was over, the students got ready for the game itself.  The Jackals won 4 -1 behind the pitching of Isaac Pavlik (last week's Can Am Pitcher of the Week). Two of the runs were scored on solo shots by Jacob Butler and Adam Godwin, each of which got the crowd going. Except for a few errors, it was a well played game by both sides.

Newark Day Two - Our first guests

Today students began the process of preparing for guests for the first time. They read the morning paper and worked backwards, thinking about what kinds of questions the articles were trying to answer. For this activity students worked in small groups, with each group selecting a story to read in common. Teachers sat in and pushed the students to think about questions beyond the most obvious who, what, where, etc.

After finishing the newspaper discussion, students received short biographies of the two guests. They generated questions they wanted to get answered in preparation for writing their first stories. The first two guests were Doug Doyle, who works at WGBO as the News Director, Morning News Anchor, Co-Host of the WGBO Journal, and the host of SportsJam. The second guest was our own Kathy Holloman, star running back for the New York Sharks. 

Here is Doug interviewing Kathy, before the students had a turn to interview each of them. 

After the model interview, student had a turn to ask questions. One of my favorite questions was this. "Ms. Holloman, in your biography you said that as someone who was playing women's football you needed to earn the respect of male football players. Can you elaborate on that?" 

During this activity the students listened, took notes, and prepped for what we have come to call "The Locker Room Activity."

Here is the Locker Room in action. Students as reporters have to make themselves heard in order to get their question answered.

Students then sat down and wrote a first draft. Some wrote about Kathy, some about Doug, and some about the event as a whole. The teachers were impressed with how many students are already looking for their angles. One student asked Kathy follow up questions about her diet when she was a kid ("Did you eat Wheaties?") is going to write about the connection between eating habits and health. Several students were writing about inspiration and motivation, as hearing the two guests talk about what they have accomplished really struck a chord with them.

At the end of the morning, our staff photojournalist Brian Horton gave students a short overview of how photos tell a story and how to think about creating the shot you need. All the photos on the blog today are Brian's work, and demonstrate the kinds of things he was talking about (including detail, context, and perspective). Later in the day the students started to get comfortable with the Flip cameras they will be using to shoot their own video projects.

Newark - Day One

Note: Posted a day late due to logisitical issues. 

Today was the first day of the Newark Camp,  which is held at Dr. Marion A. Bolden Student Center, located at 230 Broadway. This center is open throughout the school year for high school students. It is a place for them to be creative (with music and recording facilities), to get work done (in the library and with computer access), or to just feel safe. They Center kindly opens its door during the summer for Write on Sports, even though most of our students are still in middle school.

As always, we begin with team building activities. Right from the start the teachers were making comments about the students in this year's camp. They were eager to share, to volunteer for activities, and to get to work. The energy was high, and I think that has raised expectations for what students are going to be able to accomplish. 


It looks like soccer is popular, basketball and football. We'll see how much they get into baseball. I think for many the trip to the Jackals game on Wednesday is going to be their first live baseball game.  Post-World Cup and post-LeBron, I don't have a sense yet what the most popular topics are going to be.  I'm sure we'll be surprised by a few.

Day Nine - Sharing (in multiple ways)

NOTE: Posted two days after the event. We finished on Friday.

Today was the final day. We invited parents and family to come to see the students' video projects, and over 20 people came. We have done this for the past few years, but this was certainly the best turnout that we have had. People started to arrive around noon, and after an informal pizza lunch, we all gathered in the main room. We asked each student to introduce their video project, and everybody got a nice round of applause after their story was shown. The strict time limit we put on the videos not only helped keep their features focused on their topic, it also allowed us to show all of the videos.

Even with short stories, 25 videos is a lot to sit through, so at the half-way point we got everybody up for a physical activity. We had two large groups (parents and children together) playing "I like everybody who..."

After the final video was shown, we passed out the copies of The Future Features.

Finally, students gathered for a final group photo and made plans to get together during the summer.

The story behind all of this is that students began the day doing more work on their video projects. Thanks to digital technology, a movie can be finished, saved, and shown a few minutes later. We took advantage of this, and several students worked right up until noon to make sure they had the feature in the shape they wanted it to be. Teachers moved from one student to another, giving feedback about the story, offering technical support, and gently reminding students about the noon deadline. For staff it was a pretty hectic morning, but it was well worth it.  One students lost a lot of the work she had done the previous day due to some computer glitch, and so had to push to finish in time. Two other students who had already finished (and who could have been outside playing kickball) sat with her for over an hour helping her get the piece ready in time. It turned out well, and I think watching these students collaborate was the highlight of the camp for me.

Next week I will post sample titles, information about the stories, and feedback we received from the students.

Day Eight - Revise, Revise, and Revise Some More

Catching up a bit here (so pay no attention to the publication date of the post itself).

On the eighth day, students came to camp prepared to work. They began by finishing off their accounts of the rained out Jackals game (if they had not done that already), then jumped into revising their print features and their video projects.

The print feature had to be done by the end of the day so that all the stories could be collected and formatted as part of an end of camp publication. We asked the students to suggest and vote on titles for the publication. The name receiving the most votes was "The Future Features," with "The Glepic Gazette" a close second. (See a previous post for information about the word 'glepic').  As we do every year, copies of the Future Features will be distributed on the last day to all participants. Previous publications had names like "The Sports Slice" and "The Huddle" (all chosen by the students). For the first few years of the camp we had students work with Publisher to create newspapers on their own, but we found that many groups got caught up with the bells and whistles of the program (adding crossword puzzles, word searches, extraneous photos, etc.) and this distracted from revising their stories. It was hard to take away that hands-on experience from the students, but given the two-week duration of the camp we decided that we needed to prioritize, and more time for revision won out. We have seen features of increasing quality, so it seems like that decision was the right one. 

The revision today encompassed everything that we have been talking about - organization, language, and copy editing. Students worked on their own, with teachers,

and in pairs doing peer critiques.

Many of the students slipped into peer critiques quite easily. On the first day of camp we set up group ground rules and these included suggestions about respectful behavior. Some students had a bit of a hard time, taking their peers suggestions quite personally. Because of our low student-staff ratio, teachers were able to step in during these incidents and walk the students through the process.  A few times I heard variations on  - "He's not saying he doesn't like YOU, he's saying he doesn't really like the way this sentence is written" or  "This is only their advice, you don't have to do what they say, and they won't be offended if you don't." Schools also require that students engage in productive peer critiques, so we hope that their Write on Sports experience helps them further develop the skills they need to communicate around writing (and not just through writing).

Students also worked on their video projects.

We gave students a somewhat loose two-minute limit for their video projects. We tried to get them to think about how the average feature on a news broadcast is put together, and stressed that reporters have to work within tight frameworks (for column inches or minutes of screen time). We used iMovie, and as with Publisher in the past, it is very easy for students to get distracted by shiny fonts, funky transitions, and the ability to post snippets of music as a background. Teachers kept going back to students with the same two questions - "What is your story and how does this (video, voice over, title, etc.) help move your story forward?" Students who started with 4 minute drafts and who thought that there was nothing - nothing! -  that they could remove were surprised to find that they could get it down to 3 minutes and that the story became sharper.  At times there was some significant push and pull around competing visions, just like at a real network. We didn't make students scrub off all of their little flourishes (it still is a summer camp), but most students got the message about staying on topic and working within a time frame.

Day Seven - Rain, rain, rain

The plan: Arrive at the Jackals game early enough to interview a manager and some players. Watch the game. Eat some hot dogs. Shoot the breeze. Write about it afterward.

The reality:

Soon after we arrived the downpour started. All of us huddled under a tent and managed to conduct an interview session with the Manager of the team (Joe Calfapietra), the First Base Coach (Ani Ramos), and the Hitting Coach (Eddie Gerald). The three coaches were very accommodating, and the students stuck with it.

This is coach Ramos answering a question (possibly one about who his favorite player of all time is*). Other questions focused on how the Jackals staff felt about being in fourth place and what they thought they needed to do to improve. Some students asked about the mix of rookies and veterans on the team and how chemistry is built.

They worked hard, concentrating on hearing the answers over the general din of the stadium and trying to keep their papers dry. Although these were not great conditions to work in, it did provide a glimpse of the life of a journalist. Sometimes the story you were planning on writing doesn't materialize, and you have to switch on the fly.

While waiting out the rain, the students still had their (sometimes soggy) hot dogs and made the best of it.

When it became apparent that the skies were not going to clear, we called for a shuttle bus and got the students back to campus. Once they were there and had a chance to dry off a bit, they got to blogging. What was going to be a game account turned into stories about the rain. Here are some selections from their accounts. Click on the blog name to be taken to the blog itself.  Please note that like most blogs, they are not copyedited.

A few minutes later, it was time to head to the Yogi Berra Stadium to watch the game. We all had to walk to the stadium and it was only drizzling outside. No one was bothered by it, so we just kept our hopes and excitement up!

"The Game Must Go On!" shouted Yvenson in a determined and fierce manner.

- Big Nick’s Sports Bar

After our sweet little interview our group waited under the tarp for the weather to clear up, sadly it didn't. So for about the next hour and a half our class ran around getting food and watching employees run on the wet field. In my spare time I grabbed some soggy hot dogs and cheese fries with my good friend Ace Vet.

- Angie Suarez

Ponchos, umbrellas, you name it, everyone who attended got drenched either way.

- Woot!

To get our food, we had to rush in the heavy rain and use team work to bring it back while one person held on to the umbrella and the other held the food. I guess it was a good activity for us to learn cooperation and teamwork which is always good to have in your life if you need help with anything.

- J Pokes

What a experience I thought, sarcasm intended.

- Black Fridays


* His favorite player: Yankee catcher Thurman Munson

Day Six - Revising for Language

Today we worked on revising for language - replacing tired or overused words, using descriptive language, and finding a voice. Students read newspaper stories to identify words they liked, and they each created a personal thesaurus in their writer's notebook. (Hopefully they will keep up this habit). They then looked at some photos and wrote down words that came to mind. The idea was to look for powerful words. Here's a few choice ones.






And a few made up words.



As you can see, "glepic" is a combination of glorious and epic. "Rexshausted" (the exact spelling of this was up for debate) is simultaneously feeling both relieved and exhausted. The students coined it for John Isner, winner of the longest Wimbledon match in history (11 hours and 5 minutes).

Once they had a list, they engaged in a "give one - get one" activity (sharing a word they liked, then getting a new word from their partner). Other words that turned up included: jubilant, indomitable, nagging, captivating, intuitive, erupted, mediocre, and jinxed. Good words all.

Finally, they turned to their own stories to revise them for the second time. This involved getting feedback from staff and from peers.