NJTV to Highlight Triton High's NJ History Program

The Triton Regional High School American Studies program's New Jersey Festival will be showcased on NJTV this Sunday.

It will mark the second time the "Classroom Close-up, NJ" segment has aired on the New Jersey-centric TV station's magazine-style program about education. The Triton segment debuted back in September.

It will air locally this second run at 12:30 and 7:30 p.m. on Sunday.

Triton's American Studies program integrates lessons in both history and English. It is a competitive program, with only 50 students out of 150 who applied for the 2011-12 school year being accepted.

The New Jersey Festival, held at the school each spring, showcases roughly six months of work by the program's 50 students.

"We are very proud of teachers Rebecca Vives and Stephanie DeCosta for organizing this event and challenging their students to perform at higher levels," said Brian Repici, director of curriculum and instruction at Black Horse Pike Regional School District.

The students first write a four- to six-page paper on a given topic as it relates to New Jersey, according to Vives, a history teacher at Triton for six years now.

"We try to get the kids to do something that relates to them—we ask them if they go down the Shore for the summer, if they play hockey, if they play baseball—to try to make it relevant to their lives," she said.

Once the students have completed their essays, DeCosta, an English teacher, works with them to produce a visual element to their project—this is the part of the project one would see if at the New Jersey Festival.

Vives pointed to three Gloucester Township residents' projects from 2011 as exemplary—Samantha Rosenberger's about the state's rich horse racing history, Alexa Rutter's about New Jersey-based TV shows and Steve O'Brien's on the Garden State's paintball past.

On Tuesday, Vives noted that most of the students who participated in Triton's March 2011 New Jersey Festival watched the segment when it first aired last month.

Vives, DeCosta and the American Studies students learned in January that "Classroom Close-up NJ" wanted to highlight their efforts.

"The kids were really excited that they were going to have the chance to be on TV and to show people who couldn't come to the program what they had been working so hard on," Vives said.

Two years ago, Glenn Smith's technology challenge was featured on "Classroom Close-up, NJ," when it aired on the now-defunct NJN.

New Jersey Education Association, the state teachers' union, produces "Classroom Close-up, NJ."