This year at Sickles, Fair Haven’s elementary school, I started Sickles Studios. Sickles Studios is our student-run news show. I’ve written before about the unbelievable difference a student-run news show can make when we let kids highlight the amazing things their peers, school staff, and community members are doing. There is one major difference I’ve found between an elementary vs. high school news shows: I’m helping my little ones pull back the curtain to help students learn how things work.
When I was teaching high school kids, I was able to send anchors out in their cars to go to get the scoop on a feature. With third graders, it is much harder but every bit as important. Last week, our Friendship Club held a school-wide food drive for our local soup kitchen, Lunch Break. Originally, we were going to do a piece on the success of the food drive, but our awesome principal, Cheryl Cuddihy, teacher, Pam Greenhall, and I thought it was important for students to see how the food got from the school and onto the plate of someone in need. We wanted to take students to Lunch Break, but the logistics just didn’t work out. Instead, we went and filmed the process for the kids to see. Check out the video we made about Lunch Break featuring the made-for-the-limelight Mrs. Rizzo!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFMUqtoCfTI
By showing our kids what happens when the food leaves our school, we hope to grow empathy in our students. Often, especially at the elementary level, students either don’t understand or are disconnected from the end results of things like food drives and they don’t see the people and the processes involved in the systems they interact with on a daily basis. Another example: our students have recess in a township-owned park. The park is beautiful and well maintained, but how does it get that way? To find out, Sickles Studios booked an interview with Mr. Breckenridge, Parks & Recreation Director for Fair Haven, who talked about the parks, his job, and some of his hobbies. Kids gained a better understanding of the work that went into maintaining the park and the people behind the curtain.
Pulling back the curtain and helping show all the moving pieces that make systems work helps teach empathy. Empathy makes people better and I’m proud to promote it through Sickles Studios. Imagine if students (or anyone, really) thought about the people and the hard work that goes on behind the curtain before they acted. I bet a feature on the custodians who clean up after students in the lunchroom could lead to more students throwing out trash. I bet a feature on where garbage goes when my kids put it at the end of the driveway or into the lunchroom garbage cans could lead to more recycling.
Consider harnessing the power of a student-run news show as a means to improve school culture and help teach empathy.
If you were inspired by Mrs. Rizzo and the work she and the rest of Lunch Break are doing, make a donation! They’re making a difference in our community.
Until Next Time,
GLHF