Getting it right, under the lights

The countdown has begun for the Panda Channel morning news, but there’s a word on the teleprompter that co-anchor Jessica Demchuk just can’t wrap her brain around, “participants.”

She sputters on the first try, passing up the “t” and blurting out the “c.” The word comes out “parcipants,” then “parsp” on second try and finally “pbpt.” The technician on the teleprompter scrolls the word up and down until the newscaster is totally tongue-tied. It’s not even a big word, not a real big word anyway, not for Demchuk.

But now there’s two minutes before the show goes live, before Demchuk stares into the camera lens and gives it her best Katie Couric – brainy, serious, engaging, even though all that’s to be seen in the convex camera lens is her reflection and that, no less, is upside down. This isn’t clowning around in kindergarten watching yourself go by in a monitor of the school security camera. This is fifth grade. And in fifth grade, when they do the news at Spokane Valley’s Opportunity Elementary School, they get it right.

Three. Two. One.

“Good Morning, Opportunity! Welcome to Opportunity’s news on the Panda Channel. My name is Jessica Demchuk and I am in Mrs. Murphy’s fifth-grade class,” she says, smoothly pausing for her co-anchor’s intro.

“My name is Ally Daly and I am in Mrs. Carpenter’s fifth-grade class.”

“Today’s date,” the girls say, “is Friday, March 17, 2006.”

Newscasts are common in the upper grades, but for an elementary school, Opportunity’s show is groundbreaking. The program is intended to give the school’s 378 students a jump-start on their speech and communications skills as well as hands-on experience with cameras, computers, microphones and lighting. Only the best students are recommended for the program.

“They have to have good communication skills, do their homework and be self managers,” says Molly Carolan, Opportunity principal. The show airs Friday mornings, but the students spend most of the week before school and during lunch getting prepared.

Demchuk and Daly deliver more news in 10 minutes than commercial news programs deliver in 30.

Up first Friday, a look at the weather: rain with a chance of snow showers and high of 47 degrees. Then it’s on to the hot lunch menu – beef and cheese fingers, oven fries, a celery cruncher, double chocolate chip cookie and low-fat milk, followed by the birthdays of seven classmates with quirky names, all enunciated beautifully by Demchuk and Daly, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance, led by special guest Mason Fitzhugh from Mrs. Shawlee’s third-grade class. And that’s just the first three minutes.

There’s a Panda Channel exclusive by roving reporter Victoria Tobin on March Madness bracketology. It seems that teacher Karen Carpenter has mapped out the men’s basketball tournament with colorful butcher paper and her kids are filling in more than team names. Carpenter’s students were studying the original 13 colonies, so she now has her students tracking men’s basketball teams from those areas. They’re also calculating what percentage of the national population lives in those colonial basketball states. Also, the students are mapping the regional tournament sites. Math and geography will never be the same.

“Thank you, Mrs. Carpenter and Victoria,” Demchuk says, before moving to a quick history lesson about St. Patrick’s Day and the health tip of the week by Mrs. Holm, the school librarian and the show’s producer. Holm is also who is in charge of Opportunity’s shape up for Bloomsday program, which she speaks about with Mya Harrington. Daly perks up the show with a seemingly spontaneous knock-knock joke.

“Who’s there?” Demchuk asks.

“Irish,” says Daly, whose TV smile never droops.

“Irish who?” responds the act’s straight man.

“Irish I knew some more knock-knock jokes,” Daly finishes.

A sound technician stage right of the camera cues up the laugh track and the show is almost a wrap, except for a few announcements from Carolan, who flubs her line.