I’ve been covering several school projects lately: lots of robots, paintings, poems, even a tank.
Some might see young boys building a tank and be concerned. Couldn’t they work on something a little less violent? Like an ice cream truck?
I appreciate teacher Chad Mester’s decision to let them do it. Successful educators engage students by going for what interests them. For junior-high boys, that might mean things like tanks.
When I was a high schooler in Dayton, Ohio, we had opportunities like that. I remember lighting up when teachers explained them.
One was to prepare a project on ‘choices.? Possibilities were wide open ? report, speech, skit, video, etc. My group went with video.
What we came up with was a ‘Twilight Zone? episode about the atomic bombing of Japan during World War II. Our teacher could have taken one look at that and said ‘That’s sick! Think of something else,? but she didn’t.
The plot: crew members, led by me, copilot, had second thoughts, inspired by the bombing of Hiroshima. We took over the plane and determined not to complete the bombing. Twilight Zone twist: the ‘bombing lever? pulled by itself, dropping the bomb anyway.
Pretty fatalistic, but I don’t think I worked that hard on anything else in high school. We met after school and weekends. We learned about history and film making, wrote and memorized scripts, operated video equipment.
The main thing we learned: problem solving.
Bomber set? The Air Force Museum was close by. It had an exhibit made with a B-29 fuselage, a tunnel people could walk through to see what a World War II bomber was like inside.
The museum also had on exhibit ‘Bockscar,? the actual B-29 bomber that dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. One of us could do a good Rod Serling impression ? we filmed his lines in front of it.
Exteriors? We spliced in footage from a World War II movie.
Costumes? We asked our dads, uncles, and anyone else who served in the military to dig out old uniforms. One came up with an old bomber jacket.
Lever moving by itself? We discovered levers in the exhibit were interconnected, so pulling one would cause another to move by itself. A decent special effect.
We took the roles of pilot, co-pilot, radio operator, bombardier, etc., filming ourselves in the seats, working controls, saying our lines. We asked permission, but, oddly, soon after plexiglass walls were installed so people couldn’t get in the seats.
We spliced in the dropping bomb and atomic explosion from the movie, then cut to ‘Rod Serling,? filmed at a local landfill, explaining that some things can’t be changed … in the Twilight Zone.
The teacher could have assigned a textbook chapter on ‘choices? and left it at that. Thank goodness for teachers like her, Chad Mester, Kyle Hughes, and all the others who let their students take an idea, whatever it is, and run with it.
Also, thank goodness for mothers ? my mom Jill, mother-in-law Mary, wife Theresa, and all other moms. Happy Mother’s Day!