By: Ty Lounsbury
On Tuesday, September 26, a meeting took place in Mr. Doty’s room in the high school. The meeting consisted of eight people: Dr. Caruso, Dr. LaCoe, Mr. Jackman, Mr. Branch, Mr. Doty, Mrs. Mitschele, and two seniors, Lily Struble and Ryan Tattersall. Although many of the people do not need introductions, Dr. LaCoe and Mr. Branch might not be as well-known as the others. Dr. LaCoe is the Director of Curriculum Instruction and Assessment at Wallenpaupack, and Mr. Branch is one of our IT department members. This meeting was to discuss the future of streaming school events at Wallenpaupack.
Although the plan is to begin small, the overall goal is to be able to stream as many events as possible to avoid anyone feeling left out of any occasion. On October 13, at the district-wide pep rally, there will be a test run. Students planning on going into journalism pathways are working with Mr. Jackman’s students, who already have experience using some of the equipment to broadcast this event. The broadcast then goes onto the school website as a link for anyone who wants to see it! If all goes well, they’ll soon start streaming football games and other events that take place at school, like concerts and plays (as much as copyright allows). As Dr. Caruso pointed out when I interviewed him, “We’re a whole heck of a lot more than just sports.”
With how big our district is, it’s no surprise that people have trouble making it to all the events. Maybe some don’t want to go to all of them, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be given the option to watch the events. Another component to this is that it’s good training for people who want to go into a journalism/communications pathway. A principal goal for streaming these events is to give the students the chance to be creative with the presentations of the events. The hope is to help students get comfortable with the equipment and the environment of events and reporting on them. It’s obvious how much Dr. Caruso has faith in the students involved. It showed even more towards the end of our interview when he said, “I just see the level of interest that’s there, and it’s impressive.” Wallenpaupack is lucky to have administrators like Dr. Caruso who truly do put we students first. Hopefully everything will go as planned, and this amazing idea can come to be!
