Week 3 & 4

Week 3

The bulk of my time was spent setting up and running A/V for a county school board meeting at Berkmar HS: separate microphones for 9 speakers and a video projection.  Then there was the long meeting itself, modulating the volume for all speakers and cueing three videos.  I learned about the budget (cut by 7% for each of the past three years), county hiring policies (no new hires), wage and benefits (no benefits for new hires, no pay raises in 3 years), and the prestige of winning the Broad Award (national attention and a million bucks).

I also met with my supervisor, Glenn Ballard, and other producers to discuss two tasks I would work on.  The first is to plan documentation of one or more current projects.  The idea is to briefly write out and perhaps illustrate how and why a project came about, what the “product” was, and who used it.  The second task is to make informal portraits of Greg LaHatte’s staff.  They have some pictures now but about half the folks are missing and all the pictures are out of date.

Week 4

This week my time was divided about evenly between planning informal portraits, discussing a new video project, taping 6 HS valedictorians, and interviewing elementary school students and staff for a “college fair”.

The new video project originated in the office of Academic Assessment, a collection of responsibilities that basically document the effectiveness of teaching in GCPS.  The best known method of measuring effectiveness in Georgia public schools is the CRCT program (Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests).  I sat in a meeting with Courtney St John (Academic Assessment), Glen Ballard, and Greg LaHatte.  Courtney’s group instituted a pilot program this year that benchmarks the CRCT rating of individual students and points them towards study areas for improvement.  This is a bit controversial because it adds another layer of testing to a crowed academic schedule.  However, there are success stories where attention to benchmarks improved CRCT results, and Courtney is asking us to help get that story into an IN FOCUS program(s).  It was a long meeting with a client that had a challenging goal.

The six 2011 valedictorians were a fun group, and we used a green-screen set.  Four young ladies and two men chatted about their HS careers and gave intimate details of their struggles and achievements.  

One was undecided about his two college choices, two were headed to Georgia, and one each was going to Brigham Young, Yale, and the Naval Academy (female).  This material could end up in a few different broadcast programs.

On Friday Glenn and I visited Annistown Elementary and met with Guidance Councilor of the Year Terri Allen and Principal Lorraine Henry.  They felt few of their student families were discussing college or other post secondary training opportunities.  This year they began research assignments to fifth graders that asked them to write about careers choices and where they could get training.  One result is a college fair in May.  We interviewed staff and students about the program and the research.  Next month we shoot the fair.  This material will boil down to 3 minutes in an “In5ive” program.