SPRING GROVE, Pa. — At the beginning of every day at Spring Grove High School in York County, a group of students is hard at work getting the morning announcements and weather ready to broadcast across the school.
Their morning broadcast, called SG Live, is made up of the Advanced Video Journalism students. Not only do these students help with the morning announcements, but they also help document everything going on at school.
Elyssa Arnold is one of the directors in the Advanced Video Journalism class and the SG Live crew. Arnold has spent much of her high school career helping direct the morning announcements and other broadcast events.
“We do a lot of sports coverage," Arnold tells FOX43. "That’s mostly what our broadcast standpoint is. So we broadcast here and then we do a bunch of livestreams. Like, last year we probably live streamed almost every sporting event.
“This is for the parents who are travelling for work and they can’t see their kid play. That’s always the motivation for me because my parents are always there for me but some other parents might not be.”
Students are encouraged to get creative as part of the class. For Zach Smith, this has led to learning more about editing and post-production. He now creates hype videos for the football team each week.
“They get really happy about it," he says. "It really helps hype them up for the game, makes them really excited."
Each student says they had different reasons for wanting to join the class. But all of the students tell Fox43 that the friendships and skills they learn here are things they will take with them beyond their high school experience.
“Initially, it was actually just because I was told, ya know, it’s a fun little class. I get to be with one of my friends. I was like, okay, I’ll do it. And then I discovered skills that I didn’t even know I had,” says Lucca Vito, a junior journalism student. “It kind of changed me as a person really.”