If you can measure a teacher's success by the success of his students, Plum High School's Rick Berrott should be proud of himself.

Several of his former television production students have gone on to careers in television. They include 2006 graduate Emily Graham, the ABC News bureau chief at Arizona State University, and 2002 graduate Steve Lisowski, a reporter at NBC affiliate Channel 1 in New York.

When asked about them, though, Mr. Berrott takes no credit for their success.

"It's all about the students," he said. "If I can set them on the right path, that's great. They're the real deal."

Ms. Graham and Mr. Lisowski point to the training they received in Mr. Berrott's class as a big factor in their achievements.

"You become a working journalist while still in high school," Ms. Graham said. "You don't get that experience just anywhere."

Mr. Lisowski said he's convinced the skills he learned at Plum were the deciding factor in him landing the Channel 1 anchor position.

"They said I was good in front of the camera, but they weren't sure of my editing and news abilities," he said of his prospective employers. "So they told me to write, shoot, edit and produce two news segments in two days."

At first, he was anxious about the assignment, he said.

"But then I just thought about what I'd done in Mr. Berrott's class."

Mr. Lisowski met his deadline and got the job.

When Mr. Berrott began teaching television production at Plum in 1996, classes like his were rare, he said. They've become more popular since.

But he knew from the beginning he wanted his students to have a wide range of television production experience in and out of class.

Students in his courses handle daily school announcements; cover school board meetings; do play-by-play coverage of high school basketball, hockey, wrestling and football; and produce programming for Plum's community access cable channel.

But the real crucible for high school talent, Mr. Berrott said, is the yearly Make-a-Wish telethon for which his students do all interviews, camera work, lighting, script-writing and production.

"For two months, the kids videotape all fundraising events in our district," he said, "and then edit it down and put it together with live interviews."

Ms. Graham and Mr. Lisowski acted as hosts for the four-hour telethon, which is broadcast from the high school's television studio during the December holiday season. WTAE's Mike Clark is co-host.

The Plum telethon is entering its ninth year, and since its inception has raised almost a half-million dollars for the Make-a-Wish Foundation. Mr. Berrott said he's proud that Plum is the No. 1 fundraising school in the nation for Make-a-Wish, which grants wishes to children who have life-threatening illnesses.

Ms. Graham said what she most remembers about Mr. Berrott's classes is they caused her to realize she loved television journalism.

"I took a TV course because I thought it would be an easy elective credit," she said. "And then I never left the studio."

Ms. Graham, 19, said she chose Arizona State for its Cronkite School of Journalism. She is carrying 15 credits as well as acting as ABC News on-campus bureau chief, a position she's held since May.

"I run the student bureau, manage a staff of four. And I pitch stories to New York every day," she said. "My advisers keep asking if I'm stressed out yet. But I really do love it. It doesn't feel like a job."

She added that Mr. Berrott guided her and others to find their strengths.

"For me, it was news. For others, it was movie production or hosting or writing."

Mr. Lisowski, who works under the name Steve Fabian, has had a tougher path to success. After graduating from Allegheny College in 2006, he worked as a bartender and in part-time retail jobs to focus on unpaid hosting positions with television shows like E-Asylum, a pop culture magazine show that targets college-age students.

"I asked all the time, 'Am I crazy?' " Mr. Lisowski said.

But then Channel 1, an NBC affiliate that provides news programs to middle school and high school classrooms, came calling.

Now 6 million teens see Mr. Lisowski on a weekly basis, which he noted is more than any of the three network news shows.

When he got word he'd been hired at Channel 1, one of his first calls was to Mr. Berrott.

"He's a great teacher. It's because of him I'm here," said Mr. Lisowski, speaking from his office in Rockefeller Plaza.

For Mr. Berrott, a 1987 graduate of Plum, work may not be quite so glamorous. He enjoys filming football games and supervising the play-by-play, but he conceded that for a father of three children younger than 5, "it's a lot of hours, August through November."

But, he added, he loves his job, and the success of his graduates makes it worthwhile.

"I love to see the students' dedication, to see the light go on in their heads," Mr. Berrott said. "That's what I call exciting."

Also exciting, he said, is watching kids grow up in the program and follow in the footsteps of those who have gone on to succeed.

"There's this one girl, Jessica Papale, who was on the telethon back in 2001, interviewing Steve. She was a sixth-grader then," he said. "And last year she was a telethon host, just like he was."