Not only do the students at El Cerrito High School have access to a fully operating broadcasting studio, video recording and editing equipment, animation software, and much more, but the teachers involved in the Media Academy have made sure that they always have fresh and engaging experiences. Here are some of the work-based learning opportunities these students have experienced:

• There is at least one speaker per week to talk to the Media Academy students. Speakers are usually experts in Media fields who talk about their experiences and how they achieved their goals, as well as experts in other fields who are then interviewed by the students. The learning thread of these interviews then funnels the students’ experiences back to broadcast journalism.
• Students frequently take tours of different businesses that are involved in Media, such as Pandora, public radio stations and advertising agencies. However, the students don’t just meet workers involved in the Media field. El Cerrito High School teachers make sure to introduce the students to those in Management, Finance, Engineering, and other non-Media fields.
• Annually, El Cerrito High School and their radio station produce a massive World Music Festival, with 15,000 people in attendance. While students are recruited from the whole school, Media Academy students are heavily involved.

Students have many engaging and inventive projects to work on throughout the year. A few of these projects are:

• Creating compass roses using skills they’ve learned in geometry
• Creating a full-year calendar that includes 1,100 design elements
• An in-class Shark Tank. Students must ask pointed question to decide if they want to invest in other students’ “startups”
• Students act as an ad agency, including typography, copywriting, design, and thoroughly communicating the message they need to convey