During recess on a recent Friday morning, a few dozen enthusiastic high school students clustered around MacBooks writing stories, editing video and worrying about looming deadlines. It felt more like a state-of-the-art newsroom than a classroom in Waianae.

The kids are part of , a digital media training program within Waianae High School. Students and faculty fondly refer to it as “SP.”

The program and its roughly 400 students are known for coming to school early and staying late. It’s a bright spot in a high school otherwise notorious for high dropout rates and poor student achievement.

More than 55 percent of the school’s 2,000 or so students qualify for free or reduced lunches. And yet any student in 10th through 12th grades can be a part of Searider, with access to cutting-edge computers, video and photography equipment.

The students say they’re crazy about the academy because it gives them the freedom to be creative and gives them real-world skills they can immediately apply.

“It’s not just about learning graphic design or video production,” said 16-year-old Alicia Keanu, a junior who plans to get a college degree in graphic design. “SP develops your leadership, speaking and business skills.”

She and three other students have just finished presenting T-shirt and flier designs for a project they are working on as a team.

“In real life, you’re going to be working in groups and pitching your ideas to conference rooms full of people who are going to ask you a lot of questions,” Keanu explained.

Searider has been recognized by the national education community as a model for the 21st-Century classroom. It employs many of the elements educators say are key to student success: vocational training, collaboration, critical thinking, technology skills, leadership opportunities and plenty of room for creativity.

It pairs those things with high expectations, concrete results and tangible rewards. They produce the school’s yearbook, sports booklet, , along with regular radio and television broadcasts. Every wall in the academy’s two buildings is practically covered in plaques and posters celebrating students’ state and national award-winning projects.

The Woman Behind It All

Founded in 1993, Searider Productions Academy is the brainchild of Candy Suiso. As a Spanish teacher, she had found that a VHS video camera was one of her most effective teaching tools. She would assign students to film dialogues and skits, and they got so excited about the opportunities to perform that they began making props and sets to enhance their presentations.

“I was blown away with their talent, and I realized that was the hook for learning,” said Suiso, now program director of the academy. “Our kids are really heartfelt and they’re incredible storytellers. They come with this gift, this God-given talent to create. They’re singers, they’re dancers, they’re artists — so when we introduce them to these high-tech tools, they just create.”

Tapping into that zeal, Suiso sought permission to open a video production learning center at the high school. In 1993, using a $45,000 grant from the Hawaii Department of Education, she and colleague Norman Chock collected two non-air-conditioned classrooms, one edit bay, four video cameras and 85 initial students. They offered just one course: video production.

“It was hard for me, because I knew what the Punahou and Kamehameha Schools kids had, and what we had was nothing compared to that,” Suiso said. “But the kids out here didn’t know, and they never whined or complained. They really showed that it’s not what you have, it’s what you do with what you have that counts.”

Thanks to generous donations, the academy has since grown to occupy two air-conditioned buildings with eight full-time teachers, dozens of video cameras and at least one computer for each of the roughly 400 students in the program.

It is now run almost like a college department, offering numerous courses and producing at least half a dozen student-run broadcast, radio and print publications. One room alone is full of servers and high-end video, photography and editing equipment.

Since its humble inception in 1993, the academy has graduated more than 2,000 students. Many of them go on to college and enter jobs ranging from graphic design and broadcast journalism to marketing and public relations. And many return to the school, either as interns or full-time teachers.

“I think I can speak for all of the alumni when I say that when you leave Searider Productions, you always want to come back,” said Bryson Armitage, a 2007 alum who is now a layout adviser for the academy. He graduated on a Friday and started work the following Monday for one of SP’s summer programs.

Also among those who came back is John Allen III. He has earned three regional Emmy Awards for his work with local TV news stations, and he returned in 2004 to become a video adviser and systems manager for SP. He also founded , which harnesses the talent of many Searider students and alums to help improve the community.

“Our whole philosophy is grooming our own in our community,” Suiso said. “Get the kids off the streets and into college and get them to return and give back to the community.”

Like any self-effacing leader, Suiso refuses to take credit. She pointed this Civil Beat reporter to more than a dozen students, teachers and alumni who she said deserve the credit for shaping the program.

And she attributes the academy’s success to a host of what she calls “angels” — philanthropists who have assisted SP through donations large and small over the years.

“We just put all the right people together for the right reasons in the right way, and the right people started to notice and give,” she said.

Why It Works: The Best of Both Worlds

Alums and current students say Searider is so successful because it’s unconventional. More is demanded of the students, by all accounts, than in their other classes, but they are also treated like professionals. And they are expected to be imaginative, experimental and help teach one another.

Because the students often work in groups, they learn how to divide and share labor. Because they must present to and receive critiques from their classmates, they learn the importance of self-confidence and clear, respectful communication. And because they produce a number of publications on a regular basis, they learn why deadlines matter.

Students also often get to participate in work-for-hire projects for real companies, earning not just grades, but also concrete rewards for their labors.

By the time they reach upper-level courses, the atmosphere is less like a classroom and more like a collaborative work space in which the teachers are mainly facilitators.

“SP for me was not just school, it was also a job,” said alumnus Amber DeMarco, 20, who is now a substitute teacher. “We used real-world tools and real-world skills, we got our own little paychecks and it taught us as teens about how to work with these big bosses at big companies.”

As fun as real-life application and paychecks are, Searider Productions is also still school. Students’ mastery of all those real-life skills becomes a part of their course grades. And one of digital media adviser Mike Oconnor’s jobs is to ensure that SP continues to fulfill Hawaii Department of Education academic standards.

He and his colleagues intentionally assign a lot of topics that address community issues while at the same time delving into material the students aren’t already familiar with, he said. The kids then have to go and perform outside research before they can begin on their projects. But they are still given a lot of creative latitude for applying their personalities to their work.

This formula gives them the opportunity to learn about themselves and their community. Those types of lessons transcend the media industry to other parts of life, said DeMarco, who is gunning for a job as special events coordinator with the Disney Company.

The skills and lessons 16-year-old Michael Gooch, a junior, is learning as an assignment editor for Searider are already improving his academic performance in other courses.

“I won’t lie — SP is really tough,” he said. “But it actually helps with my other classes. With all the deadlines here, you really have to be organized. Before I joined SP, I could hardly keep track of myself, but now I’m keeping up with all these other people. And if I can keep up with this (journalism) class, I can keep up with my other classes. I’m no longer afraid to take on as much as possible.”

Teacher as Facilitator

Back in the classroom, a group of about 20 upper-level graphic design students gather in a rough semi-circle, all eyes glued to their classmates’ presentation of a project entitled “More Than Human.”

Oconnor playfully reprimands Alicia Keanu for reading her presentation. He tells her to put the paper down and instead describe the designs she is showing.

After explaining the designs, Keanu fields classmate responses ranging from “I like how you connected the arms of the creature to the words,” to “Why did you choose those colors?”

Oconnor, sitting on a table near the back, jokes with the students, guiding the constructive criticism and gently insisting on participation from every pocket of students in the classroom.

“I like the way we did this so we can see all the variations of the flier and prove why they did or didn’t work,” he tells Keanu’s team. “I hope you’ve saved everything to put in your portfolios at the end.”

When he releases the students for their recess, many of them make a beeline for computers to start applying the feedback they just received.

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