Congratulations to St. Edmund Campion Catholic School for receiving the Desjardins Grant for Education of $3000 for the Campion Media Program!
St. Edmund Campion’s Grade 8 teacher Mr. Pankhurst has been running the Campion Media Program, which includes Campion News (YouTube), Campion Cast (Spotify Podcast), and Campion Archives (School magazine). The Media Program began as Campion News, a small class project to connect students and the community and to develop students' creative and media literacy skills.
The Campion News broadcast is a student-led weekly news broadcast called Campion News, which focuses on interviewing members from their school community, highlighting special projects such as art assignments, and celebrating key milestones such as birthdays of students and staff. The goal of this initiative is to build a sense of community, including developing the public speaking skills of students in a low-pressure environment.
Two teachers at Campion, Mr. Pankhurst and Ms. Marie, have decided to enhance the experiential learning media studies class by encouraging students to take on more advanced challenges such as doing weather reports for science, commercials for media literacy, and starting a new mini-podcast. The teachers firmly believe that by teaching students how to embrace new technologies in the correct way, students will learn key life skills as well as have a sense of empowerment, inclusivity, and equity. They are continually looking to grow and expand the media program. It is an inclusive program based on Universal Design Principles that allows for ELL and Special Education students to have an active and leadership role within their school community alongside their classmates.
The school was looking to build on these successes by purchasing new audio-visual equipment to increase the learning parameters for their students. The mission is to give students access to this technology by providing them with a pathway for an even greater voice, as well as teaching them the correct use of equipment/devices in a positive way to combat the many negative issues associated with technology. Recently, this unique program at St. Edmund Campion Catholic School has interviewed Director Brendan Browne, Trustee Nancy Crawford, and Bishop Nguyen to name a few.
With the Desjardins grant, the program can add new equipment, as it expands to include making short films. This grant is going to allow for new and needed equipment to be purchased to enhance the current program that has been started. This will include the Campion News video broadcast, podcasts, a school magazine, filming and sharing assemblies, green screen technology and drone use for school sports, short films and activities. These tools will be used by the students as they learn new skills to better prepare them for their future.
Thank you, Desjardins for recognizing the great work that St. Edmund Campion’s Media Program is doing and helping us continue this initiative.
St. Edmund Campion Catholic School is considered the hidden gem of Scarborough. The few that know of the school know the reason why. Great students, dedicated teachers and school spirit are a few of the reasons why.
Submitted by Melissa Marie
