Reflection+6

__K-CAPA__
K-CAPA is a school in Philadelphia for the Creative And Performing Arts. It is required for every student to take an extracurricular: Orchestra, Choir, Drama etc. My peers Quincy and Jessica work with the Media Production Class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. In speaking with Jessica I learned a bit about how the course is structured, the class dynamic and her role in the course.

The class that they work with specifically at K-CAPA is an extra curricular Media Production course consisting of all 11th graders who started the class in 9th grade. The head of the course, Derrick, appears to structure the course around final projects and/or tests, with a lot of creative development infused in the course. About every three weeks Derrick likes to have a week of just book work where the class is focused on access skills such as how to write a script, and one week of production to follow.

Jessica painted me a picture of some of the work that the students have done in the class and how Derrick likes to run it. She explained how the class had watched mystic river and chose shots for their own production. They had to say why they chose the shots, and engage in a give and take with Derrick; "Why did you choose this.....what does it mean.." then he would steer the conversation in a particular direction by saying something along the lines "I think that this...means this... because...what do you think?". From what I have heard it seems as though Derrick tries to bring a lot of interaction into the classroom and tries to maintain engagement with the different parts of the production process. It seems as though when there is a lot of response required from the students they get the most attention retention.

Another goal apart from final productions in the class is preparation for the NOCTI exam their senior year. NOCTI is a final written exam with different production aspects like camera usage, editing, and wire making. It is interesting that there is a sort of 'standardized' test for an extracurricular such as production. From the use of Final Cut Pro, group efforts and interaction, the program at K-CAPA seems to have a lot to offer High-schoolers, and although they may get distracted by the computers in front of them the amount of hands-on work involved in the class would keep the focus on the work at hand.

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