On Tuesday mornings at ATEC Academy, students step out of the classroom and into the studio to deliver the news across the school district and throughout the community.
Central’s High School “Eagle Zone” brings local news to town, and the students involved have claimed numerous awards, according to a news release from the school district.
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After garnering several honors 2023, “Eagle Zone” continued that trend this year, winning more honors during the April 5 Student Production Awards ceremony in Minneapolis. They include:
- Newscast: “Eagle Zone Live,” Nov. 30, 2023; Courtney Thorstenson, Jason Lopez Martinez, Hailey Johnson, Braidan Lynn, Joseph Pierce and Delaney Johnson.
- Video Essay: Veterans Day, Emma Pierce.
- Magazine Program: “Eagle Zone,” March 8, 2023; Summer Ryan, Sam Ryan, Will Ewalt, Max Jaime, Thorstenson, Lopez Martinez and Pierce.
- Animation/Graphics/Special Effects: Rhett Burilovich.
- Anchor: Courtney Thorstenson.
The awards are overseen by the Upper Midwest Emmy Foundation.
“Eagle Zone” students compete within a five-state region that includes large high schools in the Twin Cities, Central teacher Erich Schaffhauser said in the release.
“I’m very proud of the kids,” he said. “They work hard. They embrace it.”
The students behind “Eagle Zone” are part of Schaffhauser’s broadcasting and media production classes, and the experience provides many hands-on learning opportunities.
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“There are a lot of times when students can learn a lot of lessons at a fairly shallow level if they just read about it,” Schaffhauser said in the release. “In this case, they have to build content from scratch. So they are interviewing people, they are researching, they are recording cover video, they’re editing. The final product you see started from scratch, so there’s a lot of hands-on learning. It takes a lot of deep thinking, and it takes a lot of collaboration between students to work together and get this done.”
Skills used doing ‘Eagle Zone’ carry over to other careers
Through involvement with “Eagle Zone,” students gain skills such as problem-solving, flexibility, creativity and communication, all of which are beneficial no matter what career they pursue.
“In this ever-evolving job market, you need those traits, and you need to not only have them, but develop them and perfect them over time,” Schaffhauser said in the release. “And I think a course like this certainly helps you to do that.”
Some “Eagle Zone” students intend to pursue journalism as a career. That includes former anchor Lopez Martinez, who won a major scholarship to study journalism at the University of South Dakota.
“When I found ‘Eagle Zone,’ it made me fall in love with journalism and made me feel proud to actually continue on doing journalism next year for college,” he said.
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Now a senior, Lopez Martinez said when he first started with “Eagle Zone,” it was recorded in other spaces at Central, such as the gym mezzanine. This year, students moved into the new studio in the ATEC building, which is better than even some college studios, he said in the release.
“I’m really proud of what Schaffhauser has been able to do with ‘Eagle Zone,’ just elevate it and continue on becoming something really big,” Martinez said in the release.
“Eagle Zone” can be watched on the Aberdeen Public School District website and the CHS Eagle Zone YouTube channel.