Students make video to showcase school

Brooks Westegard, 14, knows the benefits of attending St. Teresa of Avila School and wants to share it with the community.

"If we get the message out, enrollment will go up because people will know about all the good stuff that goes on at the school," he said. "If the enrollment doesn't keep coming in, then we wouldn't have a school."

As part of their media studies, Brooks and his eighth-grade classmates created a 30-minute video about their school.

"It's an informational program that highlights all sorts of stuff about our school," explained Pammi Putnam, 14.

The video, MTTV, Monthly Tiger Television, is being broadcast on the local cable channel CAT 10. They are also working on 30-second public-service announcements to be aired on channels 2, 4 and 8.

"It's so neat to see something that started so small turn into something this big," said teacher Tammy Westegard. "It gets them excited and keeps them motivated."

Although students set out to teach the community about their school, they also ended up learning themselves.

"I learned more about the school than I knew before," said Ben Florence, 14. "We're more like a community and I saw learning can be fun."

And they learned the tedious work behind show business.

"We had to edit it over and over," said Melanie Gingell, 13. "Some shots turned out really bad, like the science fair, and we couldn't redo it."

The program will air at 8 p.m. on Sundays, 9:30 a.m. on Tuesdays, 5 p.m. on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 3:30 p.m.