ABC News “Good Morning America” Weekend anchor Ron Claiborne is going back to school today. Clairborne along with WPVI anchor/reporter Tamala Edwards will spend the better part of their day at Glen Mills Schools outside Philadelphia. Glen Mills is the oldest residential school in the U.S. for court referred students.
Claiborne and Edwards, along with producers, photographers and editors from WPVI, will guide six teams of students who will shoot one of three assigned stories. They will then critique and dissect the students’ work and give feedback on how to report a TV news story, then write and edit it.
“For many of the young men at Glen Mills, life has been hard,” Claiborne tells TVNewser. “I want them to know that there are opportunities to live their dreams.”
The project may not have come together at all, if Claiborne hadn’t run into the quarterback of the Glen Mills football team.
Claiborne tells us he was at an event at the nearby Golf Course at Glen Mills, which the students help maintain. One student, the quarterback of the school’s football team, recognized Claiborne and they began to talk.
The connection struck a cord with Claiborne. He spoke with the student again and eventually met with the heads of the school and began the preparation for today’s Glen Mills Project. “By showing them what we do and how we do it, maybe some of them will want to do it too. Whatever their dream, our message to them is: you can succeed,” Claiborne says.