The week before Thanksgiving Break, four girls and I got together with five students in the Broadcast Technology program at the middle school. When my teacher, Mr. Goble, talked to my class about working with these kids, I thought it was a great idea since many things I had loved about the Broadcast Technology program had been taken away and I thought they needed another good experience to inspire them to take this class next year in high school. Catherine, May, Katie, Maria and I decided to volunteer to help work with these future broadcast students. They were all super smart and charismatic. They came with many great ideas that helped us get rolling.
First, we all got pizza and sat at a table together. We introduced ourselves and the conversations just naturally started flowing right away. We talked about topics relating anywhere from new middle school rules to one of the girls' vlog channels (that doesn't exist yet) to how many pieces of pizza we were able to eat. I was super surprised with how easy conversing with them was and this pizza meeting definitely helped break the ice. After about 20 minutes, Mr. Goble announced we should probably start brainstorming ideas for our PSA. The eighth graders showed an immediate switch into seriousness as they started spitting out ideas in the smaller groups we created. There were such good ideas. By the end of it, the one that stood out the most was the phrase "With Just One Click," that one of the middle school students had thought of. We decided to roll with this idea. When everyone got back to school after Thanksgiving Break, the nine other broadcast students and I walked into the class and were greeted with more pizza. (Which was SO good because I had forgotten to bring a lunch that day anyways.) We sat, ate, and talked like we had known each other forever. From only meeting these kids one time, I feel like our groups really connected and could talk about things easily. This helped when we switched over to focusing on the PSA we had to finish planning and filming in the next roughly two and a half hours. The middle schoolers came super prepared! They came with a sample script and everything that really helped us get going. The final idea that our group decided was best as a whole was to have different people explain their different examples of things they have seen on social media at their time in Ladue. We wanted to make it personal, but also connect all of the people back to the same message. We used the original: "With Just One Click" line as a constant throughout the video, in different handwriting on a whiteboard with each person. Inspired by NFL's "No More" PSA that was made, everyone said one short but impactful sentence with a neutral background to draw the attention into the person speaking. Carrying out the plan was super cool too. The high school broadcast students were able to teach the middle school broadcast students different jobs in the TV Studio. I felt like it really gave them a sense of what we do in Broadcast Technology and inspired them to continue the course in high school. We used the Sound and Teleprompter in the control room, as well as the jobs of Director, Tech Director, and Camera Director. The kids learned fast and were really good at their jobs. After many microphone checks, laughs, and even a surprise fire drill, we were able to complete our task and left satisfied with the work we accomplished in our two days we had to create this video. Now, all there's left to do is edit. Katie, Catherine, May, Maria, and I are working extra hours getting this PSA edited and ready for the January 2020 Ladue View. I really encourage everyone to tune in to watch it during their home seminar when it airs! This project was such a cool experience and I really hope the broadcast middle schoolers are excited for high school now!
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September 2019
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