[NOBE-L] Proposal: Project Thunderdog

[Tina Hansen]

For next year's BELL program, I want to commemorate the anniversary of 911.
Michael Hingson's story is inspirational, and I think it could be of
interest to the students. I think that if they hear the story of someone who
not only survived 911, but helped others get out, they might learn some
things about teamwork and leadership.

 

Given this, I'm starting now to think about how my team and I can do it.

 

For the story, I have a few options:

 

My team uses one of the recordings I already have where Michael relates the
story. While this is the easiest option, I'd need to find a way to keep it
engaging for the students.

 

Michael flies out to the program and speaks to the students in person. This
would allow the students to get to know him and ask questions, but it's also
the most expensive.

 

Michael speaks directly to the students vya Zoom, Facetime, or some other
virtual platform. This way, the students could ask him questions, something
that might be harder if I was using a recording.

 

Michael pre-records the narrative and sends us a file we could use. While it
might be harder to interact, it would allow the students to hear it directly
from the source.

 

My team writes up a narrative. I'm reluctant to use this option, especially
since Michael is such a good speaker.

 

You may recall that two years ago, my team did a project around Eric
Weihenmeyer's Mount Everest climb. We learned a few things from that which
we want to apply this year.

 

My team learned that if we use any pre-recorded narrative, it needs to be
under 20 minutes total, or broken up with activities. We also want to keep
their hands active while they're listening to the story.

 

We want to ensure that the story is presented so it appeals both to the
young audience and to us as the adults helping out.

 

Since we like to do our projects in the afternoon, both the students and my
team will have just eaten lunch. We'll need some ideas on how we can both
calm our audience down enough to focus while giving them some way to release
their energy.

 

We'll also want something that we can set up and tare down quickly. While we
may need a few props, it's not likely to cost a lot of money.

 

All of my team members are good with tech, and we can easily bring whatever
tech we need.

 

I also want to get some Braille into the lesson, but just leaving them with
a handout doesn't feel right to me. I'm thinking that at the most, we could
give them a copy of our tag line, or maybe we could have them do a quick
writing session at the beginning to help them release their energy. But I'm
open to other ideas.

 

I like this project because if needed, I could contact Michael directly and
either get his input, invite him to do it live, or let him pre-record
something. Whatever we do, I'd prefer to have my audience hear this in
Michael's own words.

 

I'm also contacting the Dream Big Podcast to recommend that its young host
interview him on the show. If she did, that would really encourage the young
audience, since someone like them would be asking the questions. The real
concern would be how to break it up so the audience stays engaged.

 

As we did with our project last year, we may need to find a recording with a
good audio narrative. If we do use a video, we'll need something where the
visuals are not a critical part of the program. Right now, I'm looking at
what's out there so we know what we have to work with.

 

So does anyone have any ideas on how I might flesh this out? What kind of
activities might we do? What kinds of props might we use to engage our
audience? This is still rough, as I'd expect, but I'm open to ideas. Any
thoughts? Thanks.