Teen Talk offers valuable skills for increasingly tech-y world

MAT-SU — Some may fear a glimpse into the teenage mind, but Colony High School media teacher Brian Mead says radio has allowed the public to see the value of his students’ insights.

“Teen Talk,” the hour-long weekly radio show sponsored by Radio Free Palmer and led by students in Mead’s classes (primarily Digital Media), airs Friday nights at 9 p.m. on 89.5 KVRF.

It started as a music show with Palmer High School graduate — and former Schools page reporter — Dylan Gette-King several years ago, but has since evolved into a discussion-based program.

“We have been inventing and reinventing the show on a regular basis, refining it, tweaking it, trying to make it better,” Mead said.

Now, each week, three or four students — sometimes more — come in with news or feature stories on current events or other topics of interest to them. After summarizing their story, the speaker asks one of a few prepared questions to open discussion.

The most recent episode covered Sony’s movie “The Interview,” the video game “Far Cry 5,” the Charlie Hedbo attack in France, the NFL playoffs and what happened in the gaming world in 2014.

“One of the things the kids are getting is what we call 21st-century skills,” Mead said.

In a Frontiersman “Chalk Talk” column he wrote a couple months ago, Mead acknowledged the increased use of technology in the world and what that means for students’ futures.

“They will need to know how to use technology effectively, responsibility, and morally,” he wrote.

Although audio may not be as popular a means as visual representation for conveying information these days, Mead said understanding and delving into the digital world of communication on a broader scale, for some, starts with radio.

Former students of his, for example, have used their experience with Teen Talk to get jobs working for a television station, a reality TV show and more, not to mention all the volunteer hours some of them get working with Radio Free Palmer.

“For us as a station, it’s dynamite,” Radio Free Manager Mike Chmielewski said of Teen Talk.

Mead and Chmielewski both mentioned Will Sandidge in particular as a student who has thrived in radio, among other (creative) endeavors. Sandidge is one of the few, along with Matt Sandinski, who continued Teen Talk in June, July and August last year, a first for the program.

“I watched him gain considerable experience in that time,” Chmielewski said, of Sandidge. “He got good.”

While both Teen Talk and Radio Free Palmer in general promote education, creativity, variety and exploration, they also offer opportunities for people to tell their stories and learn about themselves.

“We’re all about people telling stories, and everybody has a story to tell,” Chmielewski said.

And in the process of telling that story, he said, people refine it beyond just “stream of consciousness,” and so learn how to communicate more effectively and understand themselves better.

“It gives people a way to think about something that maybe they already know very well in a slightly different way,” he said.

But aside from holding and participating in a discussion, telling stories and being a voice in their community, Mead said students simply need to learn what have become basic, practical skills for living in a digital world.

“Digital literacy today is not only a right, but an essential skill to live safely and prosperously,” he wrote in his December column.

So while time with Teen Talk and in Mead’s high school classes won’t be the only experience required for students to get a good-paying job in a highly technical field, it will be a stepping stone in that direction.

“The whole idea of media (at Colony), it’s not really to get kids absolutely trained to go into these professions, per se, but for lots of places they can go into, they’ll need general media skills,” Mead said.

For more information about Radio Free Palmer, visit radiofreepalmer.org, where archived episodes of Teen Talk will soon be posted on a regular basis.

Contact Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.