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SCHOOL NEWS NATIONWIDE

For 14 years, SNN has demonstrated its capabilities to execute programs that afford students the opportunity to grow in their development. SNN has longstanding collaborations with community-based, borough and citywide not-for-profit organizations, governmental agencies and institutions providing social services vital to our target population. Areas of support include counseling, career development family living organizations and a variety of other educational groups.

Other excellent sources of support come from:

  • Brooklyn Domestic Violence Taskforce, a family living adviser
  • Explorers, a youth training program for future law enforcement
  • Brooklyn College
  • Long Island University
  • Pratt Institute Community Relations
  • local police precincts
  • referral services to whom we recommend our students and their parents for issues regarding health services, legal assistance, child care, child protective agencies and employment related needs

SNN’s Journalism-in-Education Program focuses on local elementary and middle schools in the economically underdeveloped Bedford Stuyvesant community in Brooklyn. Because area school districts face budget restrictions, they are often unable to provide students with outlets that give them a chance to excel.

The program teaches students:

  • journalism basics
  • investigative reporting and interviewing
  • journalism writing
  • copy editing
  • broadcast and new media production.

All classes are aimed at cultivating students’ critical thinking abilities. Students also write, edit and publish the SNN newspaper; produce a television program that is broadcast on BCAT, the Brooklyn public access cable station; and read and understand the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Daily News, New York Newsday, Time Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Viva and Easy English news.In addition, to compliment both the Journalism and the Broadcast sections of our program and to deepen our students’ cultural, business, science and social perspectives, we take several educational trips during the year. Sites we visit each year are: the Museum of Television and Radio, the Hayden Planetarium, Madison Square Garden, the Sony Imax Theatre, the New York Stock Exchange, a newspaper plant, and a senior citizens’ home. All trips are discussed beforehand and analyzed afterward so that the students can consider (and report on) the meaning and value of the experience and how well it met expectations.The program design and evaluation is developed and executed in collaboration with school administrations, and we regularly seek feedback and input from our students’ parents and caregivers. Our staff’s interactions with students are always predicated on helping the students become productive, constructive members of society, capable of responsible thought and action.Though school classrooms serve as the hub for educational activities, it is really the interdisciplinary journalism program conducted at the SNN Multimedia Center that allows participants to learn a diverse set of skills through the hands-on experience of publishing a monthly 10,000 circulation newspaper, producing a monthly news show with interviews and features, and the production of mini documentaries on a variety of subjects and themes. The program allows participants to cultivate their intellectual, emotional, and social selves while honing critical thinking, self-awareness and self-confidence.We currently serve participants at our Day and After-School programs in Public School 11, Public School 56 and Public School 269 in Brooklyn, New York. The doors to our facilities are opened from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Monday – Friday and on Saturdays from 9:00 a.m to 2:00 p.m. During those hours, participants utilize SNN support services to improve their reading, writing, academic, vocational and technical skills.

The School News Nationwide Computer Learning Center accommodates several students per session. Students receive media/production training in Journalism, Computer repair and Computer Literacy.

The Television and Video Division also takes a comprehensive approach to learning, inculcating a variety of academic disciplines as well as the arts, technology and social skills. This component gives participants a unique entrée to learning and practicing fundamental skills of education through the production of T.V. shows. The broadcast productions are drawn from the student’s original writing. Specific broadcast equipment our students have supervised access to include: digital cameras, video cameras, monitors, mixers and audio and video editing equipment. The program design and evaluation is performed in collaboration with the school’s administration and we regularly seek feedback and input from our student’s parents and caregivers. Our staff’s interactions with thestudents are always predicated on helping the students become productive, constructive members of society, capable of responsible, appropriatethought and action. The programs nurture active learning and excitingenvironment where promising new educational and child development practices are introduced.

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