A Campus School – LipDub? Sure! Part 2

Granby Elementary is a special school in many ways.  For the Granby staff, students, families, community members, and alumni, Granby is special because of the wonderful people that work together to help children grow and are proud to be called “Gators.”  Granby is special in many other ways, too.

In Worthington, there are eleven elementary schools and Granby is the only one with NO walkers.  All of our students have bus transportation because of the location in proximity to the neighborhoods of attendance.  However, not being a “neighborhood school” doesn’t keep our families from being actively involved in events at the school.  This was recently apparent with the huge turnout at our LipDub Premiere as well as the Dark, Dark Woods Night for our kindergators on Friday night.  We also had a waitlist for Bike Club where parents had to drop off the bikes!

Now here’s the really cool thing…  Granby is also the ONLY elementary to be a part of a K-12 “campus”.  Situated right behind McCord Middle School and across the street from Worthington Kilbourne High School, the “feeder school” flow for our Gators is pretty neat.  We have wonderful opportunities for collaboration with our Wolf partners and we are working hard to build on those unique opportunities at Granby.  We already have Project MORE mentors that walk from both Kilbourne and McCord to tutor our students as well as Wolves for Cubs mentors (WKHS) for our little Gators.  Some of our sixth graders walk to their Algebra class at McCord daily and we are just beginning to tap into sharing some transportation resources as well as collaboration with special programs.

As soon as I knew I would be at Granby this year, I contacted Sandra Kucinich-Horn, Kilbourne’s News Team advisor and teacher, to see if she was interested in collaborating with Granby’s news team.  She was happy to work together and our collaboration began.  She helped us plan our LipDub (having had experience in the process) and provided a couple of reporters to assist on the day of our filming.  Kristen Barone (a Granby graduate) and Colin Schlaegel (who happens to be my son), came to film the “behind the scenes” process of creating the LipDub.  Kristen went to work immediately to edit a story about Granby’s LipDub for the Kilbourne News and in just a week, it aired for the student population at Kilbourne.  I was lucky enough to make it over to Kilbourne to watch it air live and hear the conversation among the news team as they critiqued their broadcast and received some very helpful feedback from their teacher.  The stories these high school students put together are quite impressive.  Here is the story that was aired about Granby’s LipDub:

Granby’s “On Fire For Learning!” LipDub was posted to YouTube the night after our big family “premiere.”  The next day, Kilbourne was apparently buzzing with conversation about Granby’s LipDub and I received an email to check out the Kilbourne sign out front.

Being a campus school has its privileges and we are just scratching the surface of the collaboration potential we have with our middle and high school Wolves.  I am hoping to take our GNN (Gator News Network) news team for a behind-the-scenes visit to the WKHS news studio soon.

Our Fine, Fine School is located on a fine, fine campus with some fine, fine staff who are willing to collaborate to make great things happen for kids K-12.  It’s definitely a win-win situation!

P.S. Colin is still working on an even more “behind the scenes” compilation as he was also at Granby when we were working on the LipDub on days without students.  Let’s just say that a group of adults can get pretty goofy when brainstorming a video geared for elementary students.  Whether or not this video will be aired for public viewing is yet to be determined.  Stay tuned.

LipDub? Sure! Granby Gators “On Fire for Learning!”

Have you ever heard of a LipDub?  Well, I hadn’t until the idea of creating one at Granby was presented to me by Kristi Andrews, one of our wonderful Granby parents.  She had heard about Worthington Kilbourne High School filming their LipDub and asked if someone from Granby could go watch them shoot it that afternoon.  I had a meeting, but our Wellness for Life teacher, Rick Armstrong, was available and went to check it out.  A few days later, we met with Sandra Kucinich-Horn, the teacher behind the Kilbourne LipDub, for some more information, then pitched the idea to our Granby “Team Leaders” and the rest is history… well, sort of.

A project like producing a LipDub is one of those things that “it is what you make of it.”  It can be as simple or as complicated as you choose.  At Granby, we chose both.  Going into this project we had several goals…  highlight what is special about our school, enhance our sense of community by engaging staff, students, parents, and community members, integrate instruction with the LipDub, minimize distractions to learning, and have fun TOGETHER!  From where I stand, I think we did all of this, and then some!

Rick Armstrong, Tyler Hollinger (6th grade teacher), and I took on the task of engaging the staff, choosing the song (“We’re All in This Together” which captured the spirit of teamwork we wanted to convey), and planning the opening scene (“On Fire for Learning!”), LipDub route, and finale.  Sure, these tasks took some time, but I learned quickly that we are a deadly combination as all three of us have high expectations, think outside the box, and dream big!  We coordinated with the Columbus Fire Department (who were wonderful!) and asked Trent Bowers, our assistant superintendent, to play a role.  Michelle Tighe (1st grade teacher) invited Granby parent, Jerry DePizzo from the popular band O.A.R., to participate and he was happy to do it.  It’s amazing what you can make happen by just asking!!  I won’t divulge some of the other “big dreams” that we pursued as we are still hopeful that we might be able to put those into action somewhere else.  (If I say “for next year’s LipDub”, I think I’ll probably turn up missing…)Now here is the really AWESOME part of Granby’s LipDub.  We threw it out there to the rest of the staff to plan their participation in it.  “Whatever you want to do!” is pretty much what they were told, and they ran with it!  Grade levels, individual classes, special student groups, and related arts teachers rocked it out!  We posted a sample video in a shared file on our building server so staff could see what it might look like when we passed through their assigned space and where we would be in the song and asked them to post what they would be doing so we didn’t have overlap.  That’s it.  We NEVER practiced the whole LipDub… EVER!  We did have the videographer (Tyler) share with staff how it would be filmed and practiced with our soloists to make sure we had them in the right place at the right time, but that’s about it.  None of us had the “big picture” of what it would all look like in the end.  We just trusted the process and counted on everyone to do their part… and did they EVER!!

We filmed the LipDub just last week (tried to do it in two takes, but ended up with a third), recorded some audio to dub over on Monday morning, finished (as Rick had been working on this for days…) the painstaking task of editing the footage on Monday night, and held our “World Premiere” Tuesday night for our Granby family.  It was a full house as students, staff, and parents packed into the Granby gym to watch this short video.  What a celebration!  We had the opportunity to thank Dr. Bowers for busting out his acting debut (and willingness to be “redonkulous”) in our LipDub.  Our other special guests were unable to join us (we’ll forgive CFD engine 27 for choosing saving lives over being with us), but we’ll make sure we thank them appropriately with an embossed certificate and limited edition “Granby LipDub” shirt.  That’s almost as good as an Oscar or Grammy, right?  Hey, we’re a public elementary school… just saying.

I’d just like to warn everyone of a potential flash flood down Hard Road as Gator pride is overflowing right now.  We were already on a “school spirit high” after our filming day as the process itself was an amazing gift.  The scene of about 500 of us together all dressed in Gator Gear and cheering “Granby Rocks!” as we launched confetti cannons and the incredible collaboration of the whole school taking their “places” during the film shoot was AWESOME!  However, we had no idea that the final product would turn out as good as it did.  This week, I attended a conference where the speaker shared a definition of TEAM as “a group of people who refuse to let each other down.”  Now, I know that our Granby Team is much more than that, but this definition sure hit home as EVERY SINGLE staff member and parent volunteer did whatever they could to make the LipDub wonderful.  We’ve shared lots of laughs and a few tears (happy ones) along the way and have grown very close on this journey that still isn’t quite over.

It’s been an incredible couple of weeks and so much has happened since Tuesday night that includes a YouTube launch, TONS of feedback, T-shirt orders, a news story, and much more!  But that will have to be a post for another day.  Right now, I couldn’t be more proud of our Fine, Fine (Incredibly Amazing) School!!  It’s great to be a Granby Gator!  Granby ROCKS!!  Enjoy our LipDub!