It’s a wrap! We have just filmed our 8th episode, and by many measures, it was our first success. I use the word success to express the idea that actually, the students were able to run the entire broadcast by themselves. I actually left the room while they were on
But we have a long way to go until I am truly obsolete. The goal for this year will be to get the kids to produce, organize, broadcast, and ideate all episodes on their own. Step by step we are getting there. I think the biggest challenge is not their capacity to learn nor is it their ages (we’re talking MS students here), but rather the amount of time I have with them. I have them as an advisory group for 25 minutes, 4 days a week. By the time we finish with morning announcements, we have 15 minutes, 4 days a week. That’s an unreasonably short amount of time to make a halfway decent episode.
So it would seem that patience is the name of the game and keeping the kids interested while pushing forward with each small step. Check out our smoothest, independent episode to date! Episode 8!