Learning Industry-Standard Skills in High School Classes

Sabrina (left) and a classmate producing the video you see below.

“I’ve been taking audio and visual classes since my freshman year, learning the camera and how to use Adobe Premier,” says Sabrina Ramirez, a senior at Harlingen High School South in the Harlingen Consolidated Independent School District. Sabrina takes these classes at the district’s new Media Arts and Communications Academy, which gives students access to state-of-the-art video and editing equipment and software. “I hope to continue to learn all kinds of new traits in the film industry,” she says. “I have enjoyed every moment in my audio and visual classes throughout the years and want to continue enjoying it after high school.”

One of Sabrina’s more recent productions is a video profiling her principal, Dr. Fernando Reyes, who Raise Your Hand sponsored in 2017 to attend a professional development institute at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

“The Harvard Leadership Program was a great opportunity to network with other principals and learn about cutting-edge of research in education,” says Principal Reyes in the video, “so I predict that as long as we keep students at the forefront of what we do, we’re gonna continue to get better and better every year.”

Sabrina says she plans to learn as much about filmmaking as possible while in high school before continuing her studies at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville.