On the Road to CLASS

So we packed up the truck full of lighting gear, microphones and our Canon 7D (with lots of RedRock Micro rigging) and hit the road to interview teachers and administrators in three different Oregon public school districts.  Over two days, we conducted a dozen interviews and collected B-roll footage from schools and administrative offices in Sherwood, Forest Grove and Tillamook.

Our mission was to capture testimonials about the effectiveness of a new teacher leadership initiative sponsored by The Chalkboard Project, a long-time Mambo client.  Mambo had been charged with promoting the CLASS initiative (Creative Leadership Achieves Student Success) for Chalkboard, and we found it easy to get the teachers and administrators who had implemented the CLASS program to say great things about it.    

We filmed one set of interviews in the supply room of the Forest Grove district office because it had the best windows and lighting!   In Tillamook, we took over the office of the superintendant because his spot was the quietest.  And in Sherwood, we used the beautiful library of the nearly new elementary/middle school campus, taking advantage of high ceilings and lots of natural light.  Teachers are used to addressing large (sometimes unruly!) groups, so they were very comfortable in front of the camera and gave us some great segments to work with.  After several rounds of editing and review with our project manager at Chalkboard and a bit of music and graphics, we had five compelling videos to support the CLASS program promotion.

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This was a very satisfying project.  We met some great people working hard to do one of the most important and underrated jobs there is (educating our children) and we found tasty sandwiches at an old country store near Laurelwood.   The goal now is to get more educators to adopt the program and reap the benefits in teacher satisfaction and classroom success.

Please check out the results of our work and the important message of the CLASS project at www.educators4reform.org.