Stay Safe This Holiday Season PSA

Trying to come up with a suitable model for students to refer to while making their public service announcements about mask-wearing was a bit challenging. I knew that if  I simply made a mask-wearing PSA, too many students will try to emulate my video. So, essentially, I was stuck between making a "real" PSA for a different topic, or taking a more entertaining route as we headed into winter recess. Yeah - I opted to have some fun and use my creation time to demonstrate how to add creativity using technology. And thus, I began creating a holiday "safety" video that focused almost entirely on holiday movie mishaps. In hindsight, it's obvious my PSA would be completely ineffectual at convincing even a single person to stay safe during the holidays; however, my real intention was to establish a festive and entertaining mood both for the upcoming winter break as well as what creating a PSA could ultimately become. 

In creating the video, it took a few days to grab all the movie clips I wanted, trim them, and sequence them to fit the beats of the rollicking version of "Ode to Joy" I had also trimmed from a YouTube clip. I decided to use Adobe Spark as the model platform for the students since it had the ability to allow collaboration and save everything in the cloud. Sure, it has massive buffering issues at times, and couldn't allow multiple music tracks as Windows Video Editor or other equivalent apps would, but it served me well enough. Despite it being a frustrating experience at times, each moment a clip fit perfectly with the song, I felt a sense of pride. I must have watched segments of my video dozens of times before moving on. Certainly, I kept thinking about what movies I was leaving out, if certain clips ran a hair too long, or if I should reorder certain scenes, but I had a deadline to push this to students before winter break. I would have loved to add the radio mishap from Mean Girls or found a more high-res version of George and Clarence being thrown out of Nick's Bar in It's a Wonderful Life, but I just ran out of time.

Using Adobe Spark "slideshow" had its ups and downs

I feel I could have done a better job with the words I chose as I simply opted to lift some lyrics from "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" to set the "ominous" safety warning at the start of the video. Still, having completed this video, I feel immense satisfaction for getting the timing pretty close to what I wanted. 

Remember to Give Winter A Chance

Winter is not my favorite time of year. That honor goes to autumn. My adult winters are a far cry from my childhood when dreams of snow days, skipping school, and suiting up for an epic snowball fight across the neighborhood danced through my head as much as sugarplum fairies. Now, my wintry cynicism has been iced ten times over as I recall my five-plus hour frightening commute home from work through a blizzard. My car refusing to cooperate with simple tasks like starting. The as-dangerous-as-advertised "black ice" waiting to ambush unsuspecting pedestrians. 

So, it comes with a surprising click of a link to read about how Scandinavians spend most of their days in an eternal winter. I too often forget the magic of winter. No, I'm not just talking about the spectacle of Christmas lights moving in time to TSO's Carol of The Bells. (Although, boy can I watch that at any point in the year).  Spending five years up at Binghamton University seems to the closest I will get to living somewhere in Scandinavia: long winters, dark days, etc. Yet...when it snowed, I found myself taking night walks around campus. Bundling up, I trekked trough the snow and warm amber lights surrounded by the absolutely, priceless sounds of silence. Except the soft crunch of my boots, of course.

The fuzzy, orange night glow at Binghamton University during winter

I guess this is what the Norwegians refer to as friluftsliv ("open air life"): it was a liberating moment for me - some of my best story ideas came from these late night excursions. Just like jumping into a cold pool - sure, it's cold at first, but you get used to it after a while. The same goes for winter. 

Even the Norwegian koselig of finding contentment around others during these dark days rings true. Back in January 2011 I went on my first skip trip with a bunch of my teen travel campers up to Smuggler's Notch Vermont. While skiing was beyond stressful (the pizza slice method of stopping does....not....work!), it was fun to go night-tubing, tell stories around an outdoor fire, watch the Jets upset the Colts in the playoffs and then engage in a melee, free-for-all in the snow in celebration. 

This year....oh boy. I'm going to need a little more Scandinavian magic to bring me back to these forgotten moments in my life. Coronavirus may alter some plans, but it just means it's time to be more creative than ever.

A Test of Morals

 In preparing to read about a story where the main character has to decide whether to kill an evil dictator-esque character or not, our class engaged in hypothetical discussions over whether there is ever a justified reason for killing someone else.

Over the course of today’s lessons, I discovered rather quickly that students were divided on whether they would take action against those who harmed them or family members in some way. Unfortunately, the “action” would be in the form of “killing.’ I tend to believe it’s easier to say you would do something “honorable” like protecting one’s family - yet, is killing really honorable - even if it’s “justified”? Notice my air quotes around these words? One’s sense of morality is tested in hypothetical situations too. How quick some people are to say killing is the answer. Not that we want to find out the truth, but it does raise the sense of hyperbole like when someone says, "I'm going to kill you" when they really mean they are extremely angry in the moment.

I would not have the courage to confront my problems - like Bugs here

People are more heroic in their minds than in reality. However, being heroic and honorable isn’t necessarily about retribution. In fact - it’s the opposite: restraint, forgiveness, and tolerance. That's where honor lies. These traits are much harder to come by. Do these possibilities make people cowards or heroes? Guess it just depends upon the situation one finds themselves in.

Welcome, Lions!

 

Welcome to Solomon Island at Richmond Hill High School!

This will be where you share your views and opinions about books, plays, articles, movies, music, etc. Blogs allow you to interact with the online community at Richmond Hill High School as you journey through your freshman year.