On any given Tuesday from 4:00-5:00 p.m., if you turn your radio to 91.5 FM, you���ll hear an hour long issues-oriented documentary program produced by students from the NYC Board of Education���s Alternative High Schools and Programs. And every Thursday from 4:00-5:00 p.m., you can hear Teen Talk Live, our live call-in program. Now in its ninth year, Teen Talk has many successes to add to its table.
For those who don���t know, Teen Talk is a full time radio and video production program for alternative high school students. Radio station WNYE (the NYC Board of Education���s radio station) located at 112 Tillary Street in Brooklyn houses a student production studio where students from West Side High School and Offsite Educational Services run a full time internship program. They are responsible for the creation of Teen Talk Radio (the documentary series), Teen Talk Live, as well as Teen Talk TV, a video documentary program of specials that broadcast on the Manhattan Neighborhood Network. Staffed by Susan Mondzak (with a background in theatre, radio production and educational children���s and youth media production) and Toni Dickerson (with a background in video documentary production) the students in the full time internship learn all aspects of both radio and video production.
Along with the full time internship students from West Side High School and Offsite Educational Services, the Extended Day Program in Violence Prevention has opened the studio doors to Pacific High School, Career Education Center, Street Academy, Island Academy, Bronx Regional, Urban Peace Academy, Park East, Liberty High School, Lower East Side Prep, Metropolitan Corporate Academy, Brooklyn International, Borough Academy, Public School Rep, and Project BLEND. All of these schools go through teacher training programs, culminating with the production of a series of anti-violence public service announcements, and a final hour long radio program of their own--all broadcasting on WNYE.
This year, for the second year running, Teen Talk won national recognition by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency���s PASS Awards. The PASS awards are primarliy given to national media that promote positive images of inner city youth, or work to promote nonviolence with inner city youth. This year, Susan Mondzak, Toni Dickerson and students from both West Side High and Offsite Educational Services flew to Miami, Florida on March 2nd to receive awards for their video Family Ties, a look at family dysfunction, as well as their two-part radio series Violence in the City, which focused on both victims of violence and perpetrators of violence (including interviews with students from Friends of Island Academy, as well as students currently incarcerated at Riker���s Island from Island Academy).
We invite any and all to encourage your students to turn on and listen to Teen Talk Radio on Tuesdays, or Teen Talk Live on Thursdays, where all they need to do is dial the phone to participate in the program. Our deepest thanks to Richard Organisciak and Robert Weinstein for supporting our trip to Miami for the PASS Awards--it was a day we���ll never forget.