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October, 2007
, 2007 |
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By Phillip L. Harris This article chronicles one television production teacher’s odyssey to search for an elusive prize. I was teaching a television production class which had many students and little equipment. The equipment I had was barely consumer grade. I needed to replace it with higher grade equipment as well as massively increase the quantities of everything I had so more students would have access to gear at the same time. I could get everything I needed but for one thing – I needed funds. The following story has a happy ending and it is filled with ideas that you can adopt to create the same solution to the money problem while at the same time giving your students a real-world education. Do You Have All The Equipment You Need To Teach Your Class? I’ve never met a television production instructor who could answer the above question with a “yes.” Funding is always inadequate for television production gear. In the Beginning - Darkness What are the solutions we television production/broadcasting teachers are left with? We must ask our administrations for money. We’ve all done it. Most teachers in our buildings need things, too. They also have to ask the administration for money. Because the cost of video equipment is so high, a single request from us might be higher than the entire request from the English, Foreign Language and Social Studies departments combined. Now the principal is confronted with making three core academic departments happy or just the TV production teacher – a single teacher. All too often the principal rightly or wrongly eventually tells the single production teacher, “Maybe next year funds won’t be so tight.” Next year rolls around and the budget is even tighter. Sound familiar? Not only is that TV production teacher told, “No,” but after years of asking, principals may begin to see the TV teacher as a perpetual whiner or parasite who always wants something. Another method for receiving the large amount of funding necessary to run the class would be to apply for grants. Anyone who has ever done this will attest to the fact that it takes a tremendous amount of time on the part of the teacher to write a grant application – time which could be far better spent teaching. In 1983 I was hired to create a television production curriculum with the mission of training students to enter the television production industry. I was elated to be hired. I was then given my new equipment budget - $16,000.00. I did the best I could trying to get the best bang I could get out of every buck but obviously, that paltry sum did not go very far. For two years I was the person previously described – I begged any and every administrator who would give me some time in their busy schedules. At the end of the second year, I was given enough money to purchase an editor. That editor became the beginning of a phenomenally successful solution to my problem. What do people in your school do when they need money the school system cannot or will not provide? They have fundraisers. Right? They sell things – fruit, candles, plants, magazines, candy, discount books, flowers, or pizzas. They have bake sales or hold car washes. The sheer cost of video equipment was enough to make me not even consider the traditional fund-raisers that work quite well for most school activities. If you need to purchase three identical studio cameras and, fully outfitted, the cost per camera will be $10,000, having a car wash to raise the $30,000 you need is not the answer. If the average donation for a car wash is $5.00, you’ll need to wash 6000 cars! Result: your students will be completely qualified to work at a car wash but have no experience with television equipment at all. I was stymied, frustrated, and spent a good amount of time complaining. Dawn’s Early Light My TV course was offered under the auspices of the Vocational Department. Now, of course, we are called CTE. One of my students brought me a note asking to be released from class to go to the cosmetology class to get her hair cut. Confused, I called the cosmetology teacher and asked if this was legitimate. The teacher said yes. Her students actually practiced on real people two days a week and offered hair salon services to other students as well as the public. Curious, I asked if they cut men’s hair, too. She said, “sure, you need a haircut?” I said I did and she then told me how much it would cost. I made an appointment and went about the rest of my day. Driving on the way home a revelation suddenly came to me. Those cosmetology students were actually doing what they were learning for a fee! When I got home I called a few other teachers in the department and found that in my county the vocational classes were actually encouraged to do work for the public as a way of training students for the “dealing with customers” aspect of Voc. Ed. The auto mechanics class worked on client’s cars, the veterinary classes groomed dogs, the photography classes shot head shots and portraits, and the list goes on. In today’s world, students in auto technology and auto collision classes run a used car dealership. Construction technology, electrical construction, and landscape architecture students actually build homes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to sell to the public. The profits from selling the house fund the construction of their next house construction project. All this was news to me because I was new to Voc. Ed. (I had been teaching TV Production through the fine arts department for the previous 10 years.) Over the next few days I had thought out a plan to open a television production company run by my students. We would take in work from the school system and community, produce the programs and possibly duplicate the program all for a fee. That fee would go back into the local school account for my course and I would purchase the equipment I needed out of that fund. As I look back 23 years later, I realize that I truly had no idea of what I was getting myself into. I only saw this as a way to get what I needed – money – without continuing to beg in frustration. Gestation The first thing I had to do was to get permission from the administration to create this student enterprise. I approached my immediate administrator who was relieved that he was not being asked yet again for money and said the idea sounded good to him and then he told me who to talk to at the next level up the ladder of administration but that he would support me. My building principal, said that there was a policy against running a fund-raiser year-round. I asked why. He said various clubs can have a two week candy sale but then that’s it and another club has it’s fund-raiser. He reasoned that it was fair to everyone that way. I thought a moment and countered with the concept that all the other fundraisers are specifically drawing funds from fellow students or their parents of that particular school. I was talking about providing a service to the entire school system and community at large. I would also be providing a curriculum related educational experience to my students at the same time. He agreed that I would not really be competing with other fund-raisers in his school so he gave me an approval but told me I needed to go on up the ladder to the system level if I was offering services to the entire system. At the county level I was told that there would be a problem if I, using taxpayer paid for equipment, was competing with actual businesses in the community. It would be an unfair advantage. I offered the following: these are high school students. Is it even possible that they could be at a such competency level of professionals in the area that my students could ever actually take business away from the pros? Secondly, if my students were actually that good wouldn’t the pros be offering them jobs and wasn’t that the purpose of the class to begin with? I stated that my rates would be so far below what the professionals would charge that the only business we’d have would be people who could never afford the professionals. Therefore, we wouldn’t be taking business away if they never would have had the business in the first place. I finally said that the only advertisement I would do would be to other teachers and staff in the school system via letters (email now) and word of mouth from students, parents and former customers. I was given approval. In the ensuing 23 years I received a complaint from 6 different businesses. I offered to meet with them in my studio. I gave them a tour, let them meet my students who were working for the company, asked them if they would consider being guest speakers, generally schmoozed them and all 6 complaints disappeared. Three of them each hired one of my students as part-time help within one month. |
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Solving the Money Problem in a TV Production Class |
