Students in the Allen County School District will be featured at the Night of the Arts student celebration on Tuesday, September 29, at the Southern Kentucky Performing Arts Center (SKyPAC) in Bowling Green. The 90-minute program will also introduce to the community a five minute “Certified for Life” video---a music video featuring hundreds of Allen County’s students demonstrating the qualities of a good learner.
The Night of the Arts celebration includes dozens of Allen County students taking the stage at SKyPAC to display numerous talents and skills. Each school in the district has been given a 15 minute time allotment to develop a presentation showcasing the arts at their school. Tentative planning calls for students to share choir and individual music selections as well as perform skits and present presentations.
The events of the evening will lead up to the premiere of a music video that demonstrates the mindset that good learners process and exhibit daily in the classroom. The video brings to life a series of qualities---such as focus, resilience, staying on task, determination, grit---which was indentified by a collaboration of school personal and community leaders.
The Mindset for Success project begin in earnest in March of 2014 and included multiple meetings in which school personal began to develop a framework for a Qualities of Good Learners and Successful People document.
“The premise of this was the question, what do good learners do that other people don’t.” explained Rick Fisher, Director of Instruction for the Allen County School District. “It’s clear that people who are successful do certain things that others just do not do. We were trying to figure out how we highlight what good learners do.”
Fisher collected input from teachers and administrators in the district as well as officials with the Green River Regional Education Cooperative. The next step involved the community.
“Later in the process after thinking about this could be connected to work, Mr. (Randall) Jackson and I connected with business leaders in the community,” Fisher added. “We had them come in and we asked what good workers do and what does that look like in your workplace. Our document includes their thoughts. So we have a connection to the school and to the real world.”
The Qualities of Good Learners document identifies four basic foundations for success---thinking, resilience, work ethic, and self awareness. Building upon that, the document notes the indicators of each foundational element and then notes what that “looks like” for a student in the classroom and for a worker in business or industry.
Once the document was nearing completion, Fisher began to toy with the idea of how to transform the document from paper to life---from not just words on paper but to a visual presentation of the picture being painted and the message conveyed in the document.
Discussing the document with Zac Bush, the education director for SKyPAC, led to a suggestion by Bush that a viral video be produced to bring the Qualities of Good Learners document to life.
SKyPAC’s involvement with the Allen County school district is a collaboration made possible through the Laura Goad Turner Chartable Foundation (LGTCF). Several years ago, the LGTCF provided a grant to SKyPAC to begin an arts education program for students in Allen County. Earlier this year, the LGTCF announced an additional $750,000 grant to further enhance arts education. Bush’s work on the project and the use of SKyPAC for the Night of the Arts is a result of the partnership.
Next, educators began to reach out to students for input on the video project. Over the next several months, students were given the opportunity to contribute n multiple ways. The students were asked to help compose the official “Certified For Life” song and design an official logo for the Certified for Life project in contests at each school. Students were also asked to provide the vocals for the song.
Once submissions were received, educators built upon the students’ ideas.
“One day last winter, our music teachers across the district met once morning and took the lyrics we had and began to put a tune to that,” Fisher noted. “They brought their keyboards in and ended up fusing together the lyrics that were given to us. Our teachers plugged in any blank spaces and created a song.”
Bush brought Mark Owens and the Yellowberri video production company on board to aid in the development of the video. The early weeks of spring involved selected students traveling to Allen’s music studio in Bowling Green to lay down the track. Later, choir students traveled to Bowling Green to record the Certified for Life song.
Additional students began to go into classrooms across the district to shoot video of their classmates putting into practice good learner qualities---video that was incorporated into the video. .
In early May, Yellowberri visited the school district for the final phase of production. This phase involved several community citizens who were selected to appear in the video---highlighting how today’s student will leaves the district college and career ready, thus prepared to become the leaders of tomorrow.
This phase also included the shooting of several classroom and school scenes which further highlighted the many things that take place in the hallways of the school district each and every day. In addition, hundreds of students were captured on the video in overhead shots through the use of a camera mounted on a drone.
The capstone moment will be the debut of the Certified for Life video toward the end of the Nights of the Arts at SKyPAC on September 29.
“This is a wonderful opportunity to have the use of the best performing arts center in the area to highlight our students,” added Allen County School Superintendent Randall Jackson. “If people don’t come to this, it will be something that they will truly miss out on.”
The community is encouraged to attend the Night of the Arts which will start at 6:30 p.m. on September 29. Admission is free.