Wisconsin's Active Schools project funded 21 schools to pilot ways of getting kids active before, during, and after school. As it moves toward a policy phase with increased engagement from the Clearinghouse and Health First Wisconsin, it becomes important to tell the stories of what the pilot sites found.
By setting up a WCH story booth at last week's "Best Practices for Physical Education" conference, we began digging for stories... and we captured a couple early angles:
1) Reedsburg School District: Active Schools are low-cost and possible.
2) Racine School District: Active schools help socialize kids with special needs.
3) Deerfield School District: Teachers must get out of their classroom "bubble" to share successes with school and community policymakers.
Some lessons learned: Physical activity is GREAT on camera. PE teachers are an uuuber committed, smart bunch. Tried out an active schools slogan "Active kids are active learners" to unify the stories. When I experimented with two storytellers from the same school district telling the same story, it became clear how important a compelling storyteller is to an interesting story! I incorporated a b-roll shoot this time, we'll see if that increase the interest of the final edits (I think it will). With the inclusion of b-roll, my story capturing speed dipped to about 1 story/hr.
Now the work begins to strategize school wellness policy campaigns, choose a small set of 5-10 schools most ready for change, align messaging and coalition building goals with storytelling tactics, and start making change with story.
Keep your eyes open for upcoming story videos from Alan, Stan, and Hannah on this topic!
Awesome that you were able to have a booth and experiment a bit more with story booth models. Can't wait to see the video. We can work on a promotions plan for them next week.
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