Abigail Seager used her STEM skills to inspire School Reporters to code and create infographics on .
'The most rewarding thing about it was having a chance to get out of the office and try and inspire the next generation of broadcasters'
When I was first asked to mentor for I was a Broadcast Engineer, and my immediate thought was ‘but I’m not a journalist!’ That’s still true. Now I’m a project engineer, I don’t even write in my spare time, in fact this is the first non-academic thing I’ve written since I left school. So what on earth could I have to offer a school full of students who want to produce great news articles?!
School Report provided some really strong training, so when I first went in to the school I had some tricks up my sleeve (wise up on your five W’s, they’re a lifesaver!). School Report also has some brilliant online resources for lesson planning and ideas.
I have mentored at two schools now – the second was the school I went to. The teacher was really enthusiastic about me meeting the students. We had a group of about 30, from all different year groups.
Being an engineer was not a problem – I was able to look at the team of students and see their strengths as I got to know them, and suggest to them different team roles that it takes to put an item or a broadcast together.
I visited a couple of times leading up to News Day and the most surprising thing for me was the sheer excitement and enthusiasm from the students. Their energy was infectious. As an engineer it can be quite easy to get detached from the audience we serve every day. School Report was a great reminder for me that beyond my computer screen is a real audience.
School Report mentoring is a great way to meet the audience for 成人论坛 staff whose jobs are usually office-based
That energy continued into News Day and all the way through it. The students produced an incredible range of news; from written articles, to radio pieces, to TV bulletins and even a photo gallery. There were funny stories revealing the secret lives of teachers and more serious ones about the issues close to the students’ hearts.
I even managed to convince a few students to get technical and produce infographics using a coding tool provided by School Report. I was impressed by the quality of what they produced in just a day – most of it was far superior to anything I could have done!
When you meet the students, they have so many questions about anyone who works for the 成人论坛 – the best ones are how did I get the job and how much do I earn.
Being a mentor was rewarding in many ways. I got to connect with an audience that I rarely have any contact with, I learned a lot about what it takes to make the news and I even went some way to conquering a fear of speaking to groups.
But by far the most rewarding thing about it was having a chance to get out of the office and try and inspire the next generation of broadcasters. It’s a unique chance to show young people what this industry can offer them.
成人论坛 Outreach & Corporate Responsibility brings the 成人论坛 closer to its audiences - particularly those audiences we have identified as harder to reach - with face-to-face activity, community support and staff volunteering.
成人论坛 School Report is a partnership between 成人论坛 Academy, 成人论坛 News, 成人论坛 Sport, and 成人论坛 Children’s - it gives thousands of 11-16-year-old students in the UK the chance to make their own reports for a real audience, using lesson plans, 成人论坛 learning materials, and the help of 成人论坛 mentors.