Unmake a Bully Short Films

Last week, the fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students of Keene Central School had a week of producing public service announcements (PSA) about bullying with Mike Feurstein. Chad Filipski has received a grant to have Mr. Mike come back to Keene year after year. Mr. Mike comes with his cameras, microphones and many other pieces of recording equipment. The first day he has the children discuss bullying and come up with a list of topics to make a PSA about, the children then write a script for filming the following day.

This year the fourth graders have chosen “ A Joke Taken Too Far” as their PSA topic. In the script they had a young girl take a bad shot when playing basketball. A young boy then calls her “Octopus arms”. He continues calling her this until a friend calls him out on it.

This year the fifth graders wrote about stereotypes of men and women and how they have changed for the better. They did this by showing different activities men and women could do together.

The sixth grade wrote two PSAs one about having rules to be friends and another about misunderstanding text messages. In the first two there were three girls and one of them gets very upset when things do not go her way. The other two decide to confront her about her attitude. The second PSA features two boys that are texting and have a simple misunderstanding. They start fighting until someone points out that they misunderstood each other.

Making these films required teamwork among the children and also self-discipline. After the kids are done filming Mr. Mike edits the films into the final public service announcements. The links to the PSAs are below.

4th Grade: https://youtu.be/h7-rBAN5QcQ

5th Grade: https://youtu.be/acbSGE8xVdY

6th Grade: https://youtu.be/9RQghl5VQU0

https://youtu.be/EeUHsDoXV08