First, a 60-something businessperson visited one of my editing classes to talk about how to sell ads. While talking, he took a loop down memory lane and told us about his own high-school journalism adventures. He mentioned his teacher, respectfully, but made a comment to the effect he was never really sure what her role had been, as the students were running the show.
I smiled inside. This is the goal for journalism teachers: to make our kids feel like we are not needed! Among advisers, its something of an honor badge to have students think we don't do much. It's like a ship captain who goes below deck. If she's done her job, the crew won't sink the ship.
The second event was the before-school taping of our editors' Mannequin Challenge video, and late in the day, a Part 2 video produced by one of my intro classes.
My role in the editors' morning silliness was to provide breakfast pizza and shout "We've got ten minutes!" The students decided to spread themselves across Room 408 and the J Lab. They huddled and brainstormed and prepared at lightning speed. One boy said he'd decided not to participate--needed to get to gym--and his classmates embraced him, gave him a role, voiced their need to have him be part of the team.
Although I had a vague sense of the scenes the students were creating, I didn't see their actual poses until we watched the clip together. While I'd been mannequin-frozen at the door to the JLab, two of my editors took the "stealing pizza" chase scene to the table tops. My end-of-the-week classroom is in utter chaos. As I watched the video, I muttered something about "should have cleaned up the place before we filmed." My editors laughed. "This is who we ARE," one said, "and that's good!"
Next, as Kole prepared to add music, we hit a wall. Their desire to put "Black Beetles" as the background tune ("EVERYONE'S doing it, Berryhill!") pushed the limits of copyright fair use. The room joined Kole in a chorus, insisting that using an alternative copyright-free jingle from freeplaymusic.com was Lame with a capital L and would negate the purpose (?) of their product. "I have two jobs," I told them, repeating my mantra: "To make sure you use good grammar, and to keep you legal. If you don't follow my legal advice, you've cut my job in half."
"Yup!" they agreed happily, "We did." They did make two small concessions: they used the clean version of the song, and they posted it to Twitter, where it will not have the shelf life or copyright disabling of Youtube, and where there is not a hint of monetary value associated with its sharing.
I felt weak. I had not done my job.
I felt strong. It was Friday. My students were riotously pleased with themselves, unified in their delight of pulling this off.
When my eighth-period Intro class came in, they'd seen the editors' video from earlier in the day. The request was inevitable: "Can we do that?"
I didn't hesitate. "We have 10 minutes, start to finish, to make this happen," I said, and they were off. As you watch the video, you will not know which of my students are the Trump supporters, which ones were for Hillary. You won't know which ones are on the honor roll, which ones do not have hot water at home, which ones are cutting, which ones won't sleep tonight. What you will see is beginning journalism students learning that they can work together and use positive energy to a shared goal.
Kole (an editor who pretty much lives in the JLab) rendered and posted the "Part 2" video before the hour was up while the Intro kids spent the last half of class learning about photo composition.
"This was a good day!" a student said when the bell rang. "It was a good day!" others chimed in.
It was a good day.
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