Inspiration Radio: Relationships That Matter to Youth

The heart of Inspiration Radio: Relationships That Matter to Youth is a conversation between Youth Media Workshop participants and someone important to them.  We modeled this year’s project after StoryCorps, an independent nonprofit project whose mission is to honor and celebrate one another’s lives through listening.

Youth Media Workshop participants from Urbana High School and Edison Middle School spent their 2007/2008 school year interviewing people closest to them including teachers, siblings and parents and edited those interviews into Inspiration Radio, the name for their series of short radio pieces.  Their stories were broadcast on WILL AM-580 in the fall of 2008.

This was the first year that Illinois Public Media (WILL radio.tv.online), the institutional home of the Youth Media Workshop since 2003, along with YMW founder, Dr. William Patterson, and educational consultant, Shameem Rahka, trained teachers to implement the program and supported those teachers throughout the school year.

Preparation for year five of the Youth Media Workshop began in the summer of 2007 with the Youth Media Workshop Summer Institute, a three-day workshop for teachers from Champaign-Urbana schools, who wanted to engage their students with media in and outside the classroom. The Institute was held at WILL from June 12-14.

Teachers Mevanee Parmer from Edison Middle School and Mark Foley from Urbana High School were selected to implement the program with the support of two U of I broadcast journalism majors, Keri Carpenter and Morgan Martin.