American Graduate Day 2015 on PBS celebrates efforts to build student success

Tune in this Saturday, October 3rd for PBS American Graduate Day coverage.

BY ADELYN BAXTER

PBS News Hour, The Rundown, September 30, 2015 — Throughout the country, families, teachers and entire communities are working to help young people find meaning in education and develop their talents to achieve success.
Those efforts will be celebrated Saturday, October 3 on PBS with American Graduate Day, a seven-hour event featuring celebrities, public figures and journalists like PBS NewsHour Weekend’s Hari Sreenivasan exploring innovative solutions to the challenges that millions of students face every day.

Solutions like a nonprofit in Austin, Texas partnering with a juvenile justice center to help students manage their emotions and finish their high school education by learning classical guitar. Student Reporting Labs special correspondent Kennedy Huff reported this story for KLRU in Austin.

Detroit‘s Clark Park has offered young people opportunities to grow and learn from community elders for generations. Student Reporting Labs producer Evan Gurlock took a close look at this vital local asset during his summer internship with Detroit Public Television.

In the spring, Student Reporting Labs asked students to find stories about peers who had taken unique paths to overcome challenges in order to graduate. Their Road to Graduation series profiles teens who overcame immigration problems, poverty and homelessness to reach their goal.

This year, the PBS NewsHour American Graduate reporting team brought us stories of school success from across the U.S. and abroad this year, like this report on Freedom Schools still carrying out the mission started during the Freedom Summer of 1964.

American Graduate also profiled a school in rural Alaska where native Yu’pik traditions live in and out of the classroom.

Check your local PBS listings for Saturday’s American Graduate Day programming. Or, check back on this blog post during the day for a live stream of the seven-hour broadcast.

PBS NewsHour education coverage is part of American Graduate: Let’s Make it Happen, a public media initiative made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.