Day 159

I am frustrated.

We came back from the Film Festival yesterday and lets just say that I'm not as thrilled as I was going into it. My students were super excited to go up there and get to hear from the two speakers and then see if they had won anything.

We get to the film festival a little late because of bus trouble but that's okay. When we sat down and started listening to the first speaker, my students started zoning. Quite frankly so did I. He wasn't all that great to listen to. Yeah he brought examples of what he had done, but they weren't relevant to what the kids had in mind. Also, as one of my students had pointed out, his manner of speech lead to more innuendos than I think he realized.

When the second speaker came on stage my students got a bit more excited because he was part of an animation company and they wanted to see what he had. He really didn't connect with too many students.

Then came what my students had been waiting for; the awards. I had already seen a list of winners. How the awards go are as follows: they show the top three videos in order from 3rd to 1st along with the school and the students who completed them then the students go up on stage and receive their award. There are of course the stupid antics that some students do (luckily enough they weren't my students. I had told them that their attitude and professionalism for this event goes on their grade). Now as they are showing the videos I hear my students begin to chat. Not overly loud, but they're chatting. I was going to put a stop to it until I overheard what they were chatting about: how the videos did/didn't follow the rules. Great, they're having a discussion, is what went through my head. We had to leave early in order to get the students back before the end of school.

On the bus the students wanted to chat. I had never had them willingly do a discussion before so I was a little pleased. They wanted to know if I would give their feedback to the event organizers and I said I would. One of their concerns was the fact that many of the videos didn't follow the rules of the festival, yet they placed. That really bugged me as well. I was such a stickler for them to follow the rules and make sure everything was within the time guidelines and following the rules. I actually didn't allow a few videos through because they didn't follow 1 particular rule. Then I see that the videos that are winning are the ones that broke rules. This did not make me happy. It didn't sit well with my student either.

Something else that my students weren't happy about was the judging. One category had the "student advisory council" judging. That, I think, is unacceptable. The problem I see with that is the fact that student will almost always default to voting for their friends. These students judged the "comedy" category and they only awarded 2 places. Their reasoning? The others broke 1 rule or another. I know FOR A FACT that the video I submitted for my students in that category did not break any of the rules: it was under time, clean, and made me laugh (which is a feat in itself). They did like that supposed "experts" in the different genres are the ones that judged the films, but it seems that they didn't judge the films according to the guidelines.

If that is the way that things are going to be judged I have a mind to not even look at the rules and just tell my students the time limits and say "go at it" and just let them do whatever. I guess the one thing that I am most "proud" on is the fact that my students picked up the fact that there was something off about the entries and wanted to discuss it.

There are 2 pages worth of suggestions, comments, and concerns that came from my students just from the discussion on the bus. And that is just from them. I haven't added what I think yet.

But I do need to recognize the fact that they did win a couple of awards. 1 student placed first in the scholarship PSA to win a $4,000 scholarship and a group of boys won Director's Choice for their digital animation (not cgi). Not the turn out that I was hoping for but hopefully things can change.