GREENFIELD — Students from Greenfield-Central High School’s TV and radio class are once again spending their last few days of school producing promotional videos for Hancock County nonprofits.
Teams of students have fanned out across the city in the last week, cameras and microphones in hand, to interview the leaders of a handful of local organizations. They’ll turn the footage into informational videos that will air on NineStar Channel 9 and that they will give to the groups to promote their missions.
It’s all part of instructor Jonathan Hudson’s effort to give his students as much real-world experience as possible, he said. The assignment serves as the classes’ final project, giving students a chance to show off what they’ve learned during the semester while giving back to the community.
Students visited the H.J. Ricks Centre for the Arts, Nameless Creek Youth Camp, the Kenneth Butler Memorial Soup Kitchen, the headquarters of Families United for Support and Encouragement, or FUSE, and the Hancock County Emergency Operations Center, as well as Greenfield City Hall, where they interviewed Mayor Chuck Fewell.
The students were responsible for identifying a nonprofit, working with its leaders to set up the interview and then filming and editing the videos, Hudson said.
On Tuesday, a team of four students — Payton Bousman, Garret Moran, Saylor Leal and Jarrod Harris — visited the Hancock County Emergency Operations Center, 640 S. Franklin St., Greenfield, to speak with director John Jokantas about the work his 911 dispatchers do each day.
Bousman, a senior, was tasked with conducting the on-camera interview with Jokantas.
She’s participated in Hudson’s TV/radio class for two semesters, choosing it as an extra-curricular course at the suggestion of her father, who works in media.
But the skills students pick up in the class go beyond camera and photography skills, Bousman said. They also learn interview etiquette and communications skills.
The video the students will soon release will give viewers a rare peak inside the 911 center, where telecommunicators answer hundreds of calls for help each day, connecting residents with police, paramedics and firefighters.
The public seldom have a chance to come inside — but director Jokantas joked he’s always eager to show it off to help folks better understand the work done there.