Students yell, “Quiet on the set!,” sporadically throughout the 50-minute period Feb. 24, as the video-filming of Britton Middle School’s Bobcat TV is about to record another cut of the four-day-a-week show produced in Veronica Andrade’s class.
In the bustling classroom/TV news studio, everyone—mostly seated in pairs talking and scripting their segments on Google Chromebooks—immediately pauses their conversations. Bobcat TV is rolling for the next morning’s episode.
Eighth graders Orion Woods and Crystal Garcia are the lead anchors—kind of like the Raj Mathai and Jessica Aguirre of their middle school newscast—and the ones responsible for guiding the show from one segment to the next while also announcing some upcoming activities like Friday’s school dance.
“I’m not really camera shy,” said the 14-year-old Woods as he discussed the schedule of events for the next show with Andrade. “Some things can change in a matter of a day so you have to change the scripts.”
Before getting in front of the camera, Woods sheds his Britton Bobcats blue shirt for a collared one for the shoot, while his on-air partner Garcia, 13, types up the last couple of paragraphs on her keyboard and also puts on a black blazer. They mean business.
“I think we’re good together. We’re good friends and everyone tells us we look good on camera together,” said Garcia, going over her notes for Spirit Day and Armed Forces Day at school as well as not forgetting to mention the dance. “We like to keep everyone up to date.”
Each broadcast—which is emailed out to the classroom teachers and then viewed by Britton students through a projection screen—must be less than seven minutes in length to fit into the brief homeroom period. Soon they hope to also post it on the school website to expand their audience, Andrade noted.
The energy in the classroom is infectious, and Andrade—who came over from Gilroy in October 2015 after turning that high school’s newspaper into one of the best in the nation—loves it and her students thrive under it.
“It’s super chaotic,” said Andrade of the fast-paced, hard-working and active classroom atmosphere. “My philosophy is: ‘It’s good, but you can do better.’ I expect excellence.”
And her 23 seventh- and eighth-grade students in this year’s journalism elective try to deliver her with each show.
Right off the bat, the classroom of student TV reporters and producers get to work by reviewing and critiquing the previous day’s broadcast. In this case, the various reporter duos entertain with what happened on the latest “Mythbusters” show and then turn to a different segment on the “#BlackLivesMatter” movement before the anchors serve up the school news.
“For me, it kind of felt natural, and even more natural the more I do it,” said 14-year-old eighth grader Ethan Hanlon, who does a news spot plus the “Tech Tuesday” segment where he offers tips to viewers. “It’s putting yourself out there, I guess. Anyone can propose something to do on the show.”
Earlier in the year, Hanlon—a member of the Britton Robotics team—took a video camera with him to a competition and used the footage for a broadcast.
subhed: Bobcat TV continues to evolve
Bobcat TV is in its second year of production and broadcast. It was developed by former instructor Vincent Gutierrez in the 2014-15 school year and passed along to Andrade and her executive producer, Jacqui Finck, a 2009 Sobrato High School alumna.
“I call it Bobcat TV 2.0. (Gutierrez) implemented the idea and Jacqui and I are taking it to the next level,” said Andrade, whose GHS newspaper won a Pacemaker Award for being named top 10 in the nation during her eight-year tenure there.
Andrade is the captain of the Bobcat TV ship, but she allows the students to steer it in the direction they want to go.
“You tell me what you want to do and we’ll figure out how to do it together,” said Andrade, who bounces from group to group offering feedback to her students. “But they have to do what they want within a (48-minute) timeframe.”
They film on a Sony digital camcorder—they ordered iPads to help ease the production side—and, once the filming is all done, it’s Finck’s job to edit the footage into a seven-minute show. That process takes about an hour, she said. The student reporters look into the camera and sit on a makeshift studio with a lime green backdrop that can be manipulated into any background they want during the editing phase.
“You can put any picture, any video or anything you want in the background. It’s very cool,” said Finck, who volunteered to fill in and lead the class last year on a substitute basis prior to Andrade’s arrival at Britton.
“We’re hoping that the kids will soon be able to edit their own sections and have one person as the final editor to go over the whole thing,” she added.
Yet another “Quiet on the set!” bellows out as student reporters Steven Iven and Brandon Minor begin their segment on Black History Month, reading their scripts from a teleprompter program on their Chromebook. They take a couple of cuts before being satisfied they’ve nailed it.
“Back to the studio!,” they say in unison to finish their segment.
Andrade shares that she’d like to expand her journalism elective into two classes next school year to offer it to more middle school students in hopes of creating a school news website and print edition.
“I want them to be great,” Andrade said. “Journalism teaches how to communicate, problem-solving, collaborating, and it’s pretty cool to watch.”
