Fridays are not usually the most productive days of school. Kids are ready for the weekend, as are teachers. Yet there I am, giving tests, starting Macbeth, and trying to engage students in Greek Tragedy. So, when things don’t go that well–oh, it went fine enough–I look to something better.
John Baik. He was my student, as was his sister, and his sister before that. John graduated last year. I had him as a senior and as a sophomore. He got C’s. Maybe he snuck himself into a B at some point, but his glory certainly was not his English work. He was pretty sleepy most days, but smiled and was nice to others when awake.
Here’s the deal with John Baik–he liked making videos, editing those videos, and posting things to Youtube. You see, he LIKED editing, because he wanted things done the way he wanted them done. Camus, Shakespeare, Kesey? Yeah, those guys wrote books, but John was busy thinking of new stories, new dance moves, new choreography, or a way to help out his friends when it came to video production. Because he was the default at our school for video production–if you wanted something to look good and professional, you went to HIM.
Did school offer John Baik an outlet for his talents? Well, we did throw dances and proms so he could make videos for him and his friends.
Were there classes where he could hone his craft and contribute positively to our school’s brand?
I’d like to think my two English years with him helped him understand audience, go out of his comfort zone, and give his videos more authenticity, but that’s probably not the case. He learned by doing. He learned it well because it was a passion of his and, even though it didn’t coincide with my passion about literature and writing, I’m not sure it matters.
How many John Baiks are in our schools? You know the ones I’m talking about. They go to school, get through it well enough, but maybe something other than a 4-yr college is in their immediate future.
Someone has to make videos, be a plumber or an electrician, bake a cake, or tend bar. I don’t know if John Baik is in college, but I know he should be making videos because it’s his passion and he’s good at it. He will spend HOURS of time making sure each shot is correct and the editing looks right.
The video that follows is his. It’s our school’s lip dub. It was his senior project for APN, which is a class I teach with Gillian Hart. I watched him spend an entire hour of shooting video that would end up as about 20 seconds of finished product. You taught me (and Mrs. Hart, I’m sure) that valuable lesson, John Baik–that all the time we spend judging a student by the grades and how often they’re awake in class means very little when you want a great lip dub video that brands our school better than anyone else ever has.