During February, Skyline Assistant Principal Benjamin Anderson advertised a video competition, with a prize for the winners. The video needed to be about R.I.S.E. (Resilience, Integrity, Support, Excellence), Skyline’s motto promoting students to not only be the best student but also the person they can be.
“I want to see […] what R.I.S.E. means to them and what are stories that exist in their lives, right?” said Anderson. The assistant principal wants students to show how R.I.S.E. is incorporated into their lives, and make the videos so he can share them to the whole school. The prize is one of the incentives to make more students want to participate in the contest and produce their own videos.
Anderson explained, “They’re gonna get $50 from my pocket, […] there is a trophy, and it’ll have their name on it, […] and I’m gonna buy them lunch, and they’re gonna be able to request where that lunch comes from.” This has motivated students even more to be truly creative with their ideas, like Junior Mason Frazier.
Frazier said, “Me and my two friends, we play basketball. […] We thought, hey, let’s teach our friend how to dunk.” This is showing support. Frazier was partly inspired by the prize but also recently has been getting more involved into the Skyline community, which led directly to him creating the video.
He said, “We love getting involved […] to either up our applications or do something as a friend group together; you know, anything we can do, we try to do it.” Frazier has worked on a video with a group of his friends. He decided to make the video about dunking, because it’s something a small percent of the population can do, and having somebody learn how to dunk would be cool to show. Frazier also came upon some problems along the way, with the creation of ideas.
“We all have different ideas, and they butt heads with each other, but finding the right type of ideas and meshing them with each other [helps],” he said. Frazier originally created the idea with five people, so when that amount of people are all trying to fight for their own opinion, there’s going to be conflict. Frazier and his friends eventually did figure it out, landing on the idea of dunking.
The R.I.S.E. video contest showed how outstanding and creative the students of Skyline can be. Anderson loved all the videos that students made, hoping to continue on with the competition next year. “Our kids are so smart. I’m waiting for something to just blow me away,” said Anderson.
