Thanks to a reporting fellowship with the International Women’s Media Foundation, I’ll be spending most of July in Tijuana working on stories about cross-border trends in education and urban infrastructure that are driven by immigration. 

And I’m asking you for a favor. 

Over the next month, I’ll be searching for bilingual education sources and leads both in San Diego (or Southern California) and Tijuana. I want to know what curriculum changes administrators and teachers have made in order to address the needs of migrant children from Mexico and Central America now in their schools. And vise-versa. What are Mexican teachers and administrators doing in order to meet the needs of American students now living in Tijuana and other parts of Baja California? Perhaps you know of a good program or teacher or know of an issue I should be following … Dime! 

I’m also reporting on how urban planners in Tijuana are dreaming up what that metropolis is starting to shape up to be — a diverse city of immigrants: Central Americans, Haitians, Americans, Mexicans and Tijuanaese. I’m specifically interested in housing needs, infrastructure needs for the colonias that have developed into what is now “sprawl,” and what does sharing water resources for San Diego and Tijuana look like in the future.

Does this sound interesting to you? Do you think you can help me? Fantastic! Cuéntame! Send me an email. Tweet me (@erikaaaguilar) or let’s connect somehow. 

Thanks, family! 

A couple times a year I travel with a group of talented journalists – reporters, editors, web developers, sound engineers and other media experts – teaching young, college students how to produce really good audio. It’s called Next Generation Radio.
 
Next Gen, for short, is my journalism family. I’ve grown up with them.
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It all started in 2006. I sat in a hotel meeting room in St. Louis anxiously waiting for my name to be called for the category of Best Radio Documentary for the College Broadcasters Inc., awards ceremony. I had produced a short radio piece for my college station KTSW 89.9-FM at Texas State University about Texas music history. (Gosh, I miss college radio – an experimental laboratory you’ll rarely experience again!) That’s when a man lowered a red, black and blue NPR business card before my eyes. No words were needed. I followed him into the hallway.
 
That man’s name is Doug Mitchell (@nextgenradio). He is the founder of Next Generation Radio.
 
The short of the story is I found myself in his radio training workshop the next year. I had just started a job with KEYE-TV in Austin running the assignment desk and helping write and produce for the morning newscasts, and I was enrolled in more than a full schedule of senior-level college courses. (What was I thinking?!) But I signed up for the one-week Next Gen radio workshop anyway held at public radio station KUT 90.5-FM in Austin … and it was one of the best career decisions I’ve ever made.
 
I learned how to produce good radio but mostly, I made lifelong connections with journalists I admire and still learn from today, and consider mentors of mine. (Thanks, Doug. Thanks, Jennifer Stayton.)

That's me programming settings into a Marantz field recorder during the February 2016 Next Generation Radio training program at KJZZ in Phoenix, AZ.

​Since then, I’ve mentored at several Next Gen training workshops in partnership with the University of Nevada at Reno, KJZZ 91.5-FM in Phoenix, back at KUT 90.5-FM, and soon, in April at KUOW 94.5-FM. I always look forward to these workshops. They’re exhausting because in order for it to really work, as a mentor, you’ve got to be fully committed to inspiring, learning, adapting and helping someone help themselves grow. I always say it’s the one week I work the hardest and play the hardest. 

I tell you this story simply to share something I created for Next Gen. It’s a short animated video explaining how the program works and where we’ll be in April. I’m pretty happy with this thing because it’s another example of how Next Generation Radio has helped me expand my skillset long after my #NextGenRadio student experience in 2007.