The Multimedia Team collaborated with the WMS Journalism Team in order to create and film an interview with the new Principal of WMS, Dr. Lott. Everyone brainstormed questions and chose their own jobs to participate in the documentary.

My overall experience of the whole interview process was that I felt initially nervous because I didn’t want to mess up the recording or be unable to take a good photo for the interview. Many other students felt the same about how they felt nervous to sit with Dr. Lott and ask her questions about the school and what she would do as the principal, especially while being filmed.

An 8th-grade student, Ciara Murphy on the Journalism team, talked about how she felt nervous being on camera and the fact that if she messed up they’d have to restart everything, and “it would be bad”, especially when she is right next to the Principal of WMS. She eventually felt fine and just went on to ask more questions and even said that she liked being on camera.

Mr. Blasena, the teacher of the Multimedia Team, explained how it is difficult to explain and teach students how to work with the equipment, lighting, and question-asking.   He has only 22 days with these students and it was an expectation of the 8th graders to have a challenge.

This was the first 8th Grade Multimedia class and he wanted a more “collaborative effort” of these students as it’s an expectation with the new administration.  He said he believed it would be a good challenge for these two classes to collaborate and have an interview with the Principal.

The New Principal of WMS, Dr. Lott, shared how she could use her parenting skills to help other students and show them that she wants to be helpful. With the skills that she has also gained from being a math teacher, she could help children with work.

The school where she used to be a teacher had collaborations with other classes so this project that we’ve done is something that she wants to continue at WMS. She doesn’t want to discourage students from working with other classes and disciplines and she hopes that we could do more collaborations.

She shared this story from her public speaking class in college because she hadn’t been put on the spot like that in such a long time so she had said how they couldn’t say “um” or “uh” otherwise they would get points deducted from their grade and this whole experience gave her a “nostalgic” feeling.  In the middle of the interview, she kept telling herself to not say “uh’ or “um”, but she still did it occasionally and she says how it goes to show that she is way harder on herself than anyone else.

Overall, she enjoyed the whole interview and my mini-interview with her. She likes these collaborations with other classes and hopes that more of them can occur at WMS because experiences like this do not occur very often. It was an amazing experience and other students also enjoyed what occurred overall.

An 8th Grade Student at WMS on the Multimedia Team, John Lande talked about how everyone had a job and they got to pick one, but unfortunately, if someone got to the job before you, you just wouldn’t get it and that was too bad. He said that making up questions was very difficult because “You want to be specific, you wouldn’t ask her what her favorite fast food place is because that’s too general, but you also don’t want to get too personal like asking what her kid’s names are because it could get too personal and get up in her personal space.”

He felt very pressured to just prepare everything like questions and equipment, and with the Principal being there it was very hard to focus because you just can’t mess up.

He mentions how the pros outweigh the cons because he said that it was “very fun” and it was nice working with many other students on one big project and it could increase one’s confidence.

This is a nice method to teach, learn and interact with other students so that they learn how to be more confident in their writing and help out with everything overall so that they can overcome their nervousness and possibly become a leader someday.