A Gardener One Day, an Architect the Next. Planning for the New School Year

The best plan for a new school year for a broadcast – video production teacher is trusting the program you’ve been building or trusting your instincts to build a new one. With a baby due, a cell phone ban, and six weeks of leave ahead, here’s what that looks like.

Joseph Fouts – East Paulding High School

Every School Year Starts Differently

George R. R. Martin has said writers are either gardeners or architects. One will plant seeds, watch them grow, and tend to the garden. The other will blueprint every detail and outline the schematics from bottom to top. In my experience, broadcast – video production teachers are very much like the writers Martin talks about. Personally, I’m a gardener with architect tendencies. As the first couple of weeks of school draw near, I am reviewing notes from last year, lesson-planning for a long term sub as fast as my fingers can type, and throwing out the old to make room for the new.

Planning Around the Unexpected

But there’s a small catch. My wife and I have a baby due in about two weeks. Georgia passed a sweeping ban on cell phones for K-12…and the nursery only got finished a week ago. It’s only fair to ask—have I created a solid foundation for this school year? If you’re trying to figure out what to do for the first couple weeks of school, you’re not alone. I don’t have time to make sweeping changes to my program, so I’m looking to strategies that rely on cell phones less. Not to mention, a small program with a humble set of cameras needs a fleet of cameras to meet class size demands.

I won’t be here to see six weeks of arguably the most important stretch of the year, and I have a long term substitute teacher stepping in for six weeks. August, September, and October set the stage for so much of what we do as broadcast – video production teachers because expectations and excellence are established early. But for small programs, a ban on cell phones means losing technology (R.I.P. Blackmagic Camera App).

So summer break is coming to a close and Open House welcomes my newest students, my returning students, and alumni. They grow so much over a single summer! And they grow so much after graduating; I’m in that place where the alumni’s siblings are starting to take my class (yikes!). I’m explaining what’s new this year, they see things move around in the classroom, and we get a snapshot of what our year will look like together. Every year, we adjust and pivot within our respective programs enough to stay the course, compete, and push our students up, up, and up as architects of our curriculum. Sometimes we revamp everything and experiment with new ideas. Perhaps we are both gardeners and architects—planting seeds of knowledge and leadership one day, instructional design and outlining for future lessons the next.

As I plan for the arrival of my second son and six weeks of paternity leave, I remember the hard work my students have put into this program all these years. The smiles that walk through the door when alumni see their old classroom remind me of what makes broadcast – video production special. The conversations my returning students pick up from May are warm with camaraderie. The students who work in the industry now and those who say “this class meant so much to me” now guest speak throughout the year. We did this and we did it together.

Relationships Before Rigor

Normally, I would offer strategies on assessments and recommend getting a good night’s sleep (because I know that I won’t very shortly!). But this year doesn’t feel particularly normal, so I’m focusing on what will build relationships as fast as possible with the students I’m meeting for the first time and the students with one another. I want students to chat with each other more, build teams and create little inside jokes, make memories as they film around campus, and pace ourselves on the rigor. 

My First Week’s Plan

For the first week of school, my students will be using Padlet for About Me videos to pin on a digital wall. Take your usual selfie video or questionnaires and make an online gallery wall with Padlet for each student to get to know one another. Padlet offers three for free or unlimited for $15/month. You can go a step further by requiring responses to a post or two to ensure they’re engaging with classmates. 

We’ll also play This or That with a presentation where students choose if they prefer waffles or pancakes, hotdogs or cheeseburgers, etc. They move to one side of the room or the other according to their preference. On each slide, students get a conversation prompt such as “What did you do over the summer?” and they chat with someone on their respective side of the classroom for two or three minutes at a time. 

Of course, we’ll review the syllabus and school expectations on cell phones as schedules fall into place, but I’m not fooling with the syllabus until week two.  Then we’ll build with LEGO bricks as a team building exercise (idea from Student Television Network’s Josh Cantrell). Go to Target and find the $4.99 LEGO mini-packs in the paper bags, set them out in for groups of 4-5 then set a timer. Be generous. When the timer goes off, rotate the LEGO packs to the next group, lower the time, and let the races begin. The message I’m sending is for each team to communicate under pressure and work together because this kind of pressure is very similar to competition and film festival deadlines. By the end of week two, we’ll play movie trivia for a chance to win some tickets to our local movie theater. 

Trust the Program You’ve Built

So have faith in your garden. Trust in the bones of the architecture. My work-based learning team is running our school news shows while I’m out on paternity leave and they are so excited to finally have a news desk. Otherwise, I trust them to do their best with what they have, and I know they’re hungry for success. And a cell phone ban doesn’t mean all is lost, but we’ll need to rely on the relationships we’ve cultivated as our most important tool. 

Regardless of whether you’re a gardener or an architect, and you can be both, you will make the right choices for your program this year—and, remember, not all flowers grow the same way.