St. Regis station making waves

ST REGIS – Students at the St. Regis High School are learning advanced communication skills but they aren’t doing it by standing up in front of a classroom and delivering a speech and pretending the audience isn’t wearing clothes to get over their nerves.

They are doing it over the airwaves. Students in St. Regis are running their very own radio station. If residents in the community tune their radios to 101.3 FM, they will hear original programming on the air, recorded by students mostly about events and activities surrounding their school and music.

St. Regis teacher Brandon Braaten said the radio station is helping students learn how to more effectively get a message or point across to their target audience.

“This is teaching them to be more effective communicators,” Braaten said. “They are learning a little journalism. They are getting more comfortable speaking in groups. They are getting more comfortable speaking in front of strangers. It’s an important skill.”

One of Braaten’s students said, while she wasn’t planning on pursuing broadcast work in the future, she did think the experience was teaching her how to increase her communication skills. Anna Sanford said she specifically wanted to improve her public speaking abilities.

“My public speaking skills weren’t the best,” Sanford said. “My voice can come across as monotone so I wanted to work on that. I’m getting better. “

Another student reaping the benefits of having her voice broadcast over the airwaves was Brittany Nelson. Nelson said she thought working on radio spots was a unique way to learn effective communication.

“It’s different,” Nelson said. “The first one was a little rough cause I’d never done it before and I didn’t really know what I was doing. But it’s getting better. Most of the time you have to just figure things out on our own. It’s definitely helping with my writing and communication skills. It teaches you to have a thought process behind things.”