The Changemaker project was done in Fall 2015. It was the very first project we had in Humanities class as sophomores. It is a smaller project that is a part of the general topic we focused on that semester, Sports Ethics. In this project we got a chance to work with people with the same strengths as us in groups of 2 or 3. We were first made to think of a list of athletes we find inspiring or people we think bring change into the world, we were then told to make a list of different visual representations that we could use to showcase and tell the story of that athlete. For example we chose people like Jackie Robinson or Serena Williams, and we chose visual representations like making a documentary or creating a mosaic collage.
Our Changemaker: Mike Strong For our specific project, I was in a group with Sammie and Andrew. Our project was a bit different from the other groups. We took the risk and decided to choose someone that wasn't a famous athlete. We chose our old 9th grade teacher Mike Strong, in which he is an athlete/teacher. We decided to do this because we thought that it was important that Changemakers and important people weren't just famous people and athletes, they could be everyday people like teachers. We focused on how Mike balanced out his life between track and field and teaching, Other important things we learned were about how being a coach and a teacher really tie in together, and how much Mike puts in to make student's lives better. He was inspiring to us as he genuinely cared about each and every one of the kids he knew and he did the best he could for them. We featured him as our Changemaker for he impacted students lives and futures both as a teacher and a coach.
Our Final Product: MORE THAN YOU KNOW, a Documentary We decided to take a challenge to create a movie or a documentary on him. Using a camera we took turns filming Mike during his coaching and practices for track and field, as well as interviewing the kids whether it be students or past ones and how they have impacted him. We compiled a lot of these videos and also went into depth about how professional athletes earn more than teachers when they both equally impact people. We featured teachers and how they deserve much more credit than they get. Music: Simple Composition
Teachers vs. Athletes Again, we really focused a lot on how teachers aren't given enough credit as athletes are. We used this site to compare and contrast the work hours and salary between the two. We thought it was very important to point out that anyone can be Changemakers not just athletes. The link below really helped us because it showed us how much these athletes are earning and really opened our eyes to how teachers impact people too and aren't paid as much as them. http://ftw.usatoday.com/2013/10/average-career-earnings-nfl-nba-mlb-nhl-mls
The graphs below show the information we found and how we compared the teachers and athletes work and amount paid.
Drafts We didn't have many drafts with the project. Just the idea of focusing on Mike. We were thinking of having all athlete/teacher at High Tech High featured in our documentary, but we found that it was way more time consuming and we could only edit and focus on one to get a small 10 minute video. We focused on Mike having more experience with him and knowing him longest.
Reflection: The idea of the project was something I really liked and I was glad to have been able to be paired with my friends and that we managed to work together. I was excited to make the documentary because it really had so many different aspects to it. It had a really small segment of animation and the background music was something really simple that I composed and recorded and later put into the video. I thought it was well made and that it was overall a fun project to make. I think it was a good first project to do because it really got us into the Sports Ethics topic and really prepared us for our later coming debates. The athlete salary about earning a lot ended up being our topic for debate, so we were lucky. I was happy with the final product and I thought that it was well filmed and edited. Not only it was a proud feeling to be finished with but we learned a lot about Mike and about teachers in general. I feel like my group members and I were really exposed to how unjust some things are in society. Future? If I were to change anything in the project and in our work, I would probably try to incorporate more student interviews and footage in general for the documentary. The movie itself was rushed and it could've been done better of course, but overall as technically a first draft we were able to create something pretty good and I thought that with the time and resources we had, that it was a good project.