Two sophomores at MCHS created a Public Service Announcement for 10th Grade Honors English class to show how teachers and students really are not that different.
“You can find similarities in all groups of people,” said Olivia Graf.
Graf and her partner, Madeline Cornish, designed their PSA after a national campaign using inspirational videos where narrators take random people, ask them questions, and determine their similarities.
The girls’ PSA was made in the FEMA room. They had four teachers and two students participate. The teachers stood across from the students with a box in between.
Graf and Cornish then asked the following questions while the camera rolled: “Who here has been bullied?” “Who here has been left out of a friend group?” “Who has experienced mental health struggles?” “Do you feel equal to everyone?” And, the final question they asked: “Do you feel like you belong?”
Reaction to two questions in particular surprised the girls. Nobody stepped into the box with the question “Do you feel equal to everyone?” Yet everyone stepped into the box with the question, “Do you feel like you belong?”
“I was surprised because I feel like ‘equal’ and like ‘belonging’, I feel like those are kind of like similar questions,” said Graf. “And we got completely different answers from them.”
Another surprise came with the topic of mental health. Cornish said two of the four teachers and two students stepped into the box for the question asking if anyone had struggled with mental health. Cornish was surprised by the confidence teachers reacted.
“Their body language was just very much, ‘So, yup,’ like ‘I have been through this.’ And the students were a little bit more weary stepping into the box, even after they saw the teachers step in first,” said Cornish.
“[It was] really surprising to me,” said Graf. “Cause I thought it would be the other way around.”
The girls showed the video to their Honors Class.
“I appreciated the extra effort the girls put into it,” said Honors 10 instructor Kelli Lage. They organized a meeting time for all the participants and reserved the FEMA room to shoot the video before the school day started.
“It shows you can find similarities in all groups of people,” said Graf. “Not to just look in your group, cause I guess you’re a part of everyone’s group.”
