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It's Time for Homework Hotline
¡Es la hora para Tele Terea!

By George Raw, Instructional Televison Specialist, Jackson ESD

March 1997
Every Monday through Friday during the school year, those words remind students in Southern Oregon that help with their homework is just a phone call away, and as easy as turning on the television.

The concept of a televised homework hotline isn't new. For many years, public television stations and cable access channels have featured teachers, in a live studio setting, answering homework questions phoned in by students. Here at Jackson ESD in Medford, Oregon, we've been offering a video Homework Hotline for the past twelve years. But ours is not a typical televised hotline. The unique element of our hotline is that, for the past three years, it has been broadcast in two languages, English and Spanish.

The change to bilingual production came about when the general manager of Southern Oregon Public Television (SOPT), asked us to produce the program for his stations in Medford and Klamath Falls. Previously, it had been seen only on our educational cable access channel. We knew that the potential audience for our expanded service included many Hispanic students who were just beginning to learn English. We wanted to offer these students equal access to the hotline.

Shortly thereafter, SOPT and our ESD applied to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and received a grant for the installation of second audio program (SAP) translation equipment at SOPT, and for improvements to our studio set at the ESD. TCI Cablevision installed, at no charge, a transmission line from our building to the SOPT control center, enabling the hotline to continue originating from our studio.

On our hotline, an on-camera interpreter accompanies either the math or language arts teacher, providing brief Spanish translations for viewers without SAP-capable receivers. In the control room of Southern Oregon Public Television, a second interpreter, wearing headphones in a soundproof booth, is providing a literal audio translation over the SAP channel. SAP viewers have the option of choosing either the regular or the Spanish-only soundtrack.

In converting to the dual-language hotline, we have worked closely with the ESD's Migrant Education/ESL Department which serves the Hispanic school population in our service area. Two years ago, Migrant Education provided a television production class for Hispanic students in middle and senior high schools. From that class have come many of our current studio camera operators, floor directors, phone answerers, and audio control board operators. In fact, except for the director, all the program's crew members are students.

Since our format change, we have noticed the following:
  1. Our regular teachers not only adapted easily to working with the translators, but they welcomed the brief breaks the translation process created in producing the segments. They used the time for writing on the blackboard and for thinking.
  2. Since the on-camera translations are brief, they don't interfere with program pacing.
  3. The literal translators, who had to get used to working in a rather claustrophobic booth, were able to do so and have experienced little or no difficulty in keep-ing up the English soundtrack.
  4. Finally, students who view the programs not only get their questions answered, but they learn a few words of a second language in the process.

Homework Hotline has been so successful, it has led to another television venture between the ESD's television and migrant education departments. We are currently working on a series of programs for Hispanic preschoolers and their parents to help prepare for the child's introduction to public education.

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