I was teaching Special Education at the James P Timilty Middle School in Eliot Square in the Roxbury section of Boston when cable television was being introduced to major cities many of which required that any company bidding for the municipal contract had to include a provision for community cable access so that community members could produce local programming by locals which would require training in video production.
In the ancient times of the 1950s, a big moment at school was when Sister Chabernelle wheeled a small, not mid-century, sized television on a movie projector cart into the classroom, turned it on, and introduced us to Madame Slack who would have us “regardez, écoutez, répétez” to learn French over the airwaves via closed-circuit television. Surprisingly, it was a time when television was new and its uses expanding. it was more than clear that the proper use of video in the classroom could go beyond showing 16mm films that gave the audio-video club members purpose on special days, and many school districts, Boston included, either got to use a local studio on a set schedule or had the wherewithal to purchase one to produce their own programming as time and technology moved on.
A teacher at the James P had signed up for the training at the Campbell Resource Center that had a television studio in order to learn how to produce videos from concept to broadcast and be certified to use the Center’s equipment for school district produced programming. The class had decided they would work toward an elementary level quiz show based on the elementary school curriculum, and since this would need a non-student to be the emcee as they all would be busy with production she asked if I would attend classes beginning at a certain point in the process to be the non-production emcee. I was just another prop on the set for their production work with sound, lighting, and all the rest being done around me. I got to monitor the class and learn without the threat of “failure”.
I learned without pressure.
In 1985, Face-Off premiered on Boston’s public access channel as a fifteen minute show because that was the length of the free airtime then and it was all so very experimental and could die as a nice idea. It did increase to a half hour when it later got sponsors after the bugs got worked out and it was seen as a good thing. It was designed for elementary school students because, face it, they have the cute factor that influences the critics in a good way after all, with each school having their moment of fame by way of a short verbal promo followed by each kid getting introduced with some follow up banter. Questions were based on the teams’ grade level curriculum, and the winners got t-shirts from Blue Cross/Blue Shield.
Students at Boston Technical High School began producing their own intra-mural high school level show, followed by Copley and Dorchester High Schools, and the Jeremiah Burke.
Although the teachers were trained in the technology of video production, set design flaws, which did once involved the background logo I had designed and gravity, creating a Frankenstein buzzer system to answer questions, falling wings, and the exuberance of elementary school kids squealing spontaneously with each “technical difficulty”, added much to the behind the scenes and re-enactments of high school drama club performances where the major piece of scenery was held upright by the same kid for all of Act II.
I left for California at the end of the 1984-1985 school year and Face-Off continued and evolved into something more formal and professional.
I was rummaging around in the rarely use library closet at Carnegie Middle School in Carson, California when I came across a 1980s version of a convenient home video camera and, having seen how magnetic a video camera can be for kids and knowing that producing videos would have my Special Education students conceiving story ideas, writing them down, following directions for a successful production, and what skills they might learn in the process, I brought the camera to my classroom and my classes became known for their video productions especially as they got so into the process, the students began to employ what special effects could be produce with a single home video camera and imagination.
In the alphabet of the day, my students were LH (learning Handicapped) and PHBOA (Predominantly Hispanic, Black, Asian, and Other which included Filipino and Samoan) and hey all had to help write the scripts, memorize lines, build the sets, block the scenes, and record the work. Participation in what was considered fun depended on where you were academically. Doing that math assignment could make you a star.
One video got sent to Nancy Reagan at the White House because of its anti-drug message with a student assigned to my class only because of the choice given to him by the drug court judge, school or jail, as the main character of the druggie who just said, “No’”, so all was well, and for which we received a wonderful note from Nancy herself a few months later and after the student, while not curtailing his business, toned it down to a somewhat acceptable degree.
The District took notice and instituted the VIC (Video in the Classroom) Awards which is still around. It also found my class useful as budget discussions about whether or not the school district in a city of various forms of audio and video production should continue to own a fully equipped and staffed television studio based only on the assumption at the time that video’s only use in the classroom was for entertainment as opposed to education by using m class as a case study to justify the continued ownership of Station KLCS which it still owns.
The case study noted that,
“Self-generated videos have the additional force of linking classroom work to student self-image. The Image of the student on video has the remarkable paradox of being both close to the sense of identity yet far enough removed to allow self-evaluation and critique. It is clear that when self-generated video is used in instruction the tremendous perceptual pull of television is further strengthened by its objective ground in self-image. Self definition is such a driving force in the formative years that its combination with the medium yields an instructional tool tha has been ermed ‘the ultimate candy’”.
And what else did these kids end up doing?
The report concluded with,
“There is a tendency in some situations to think of self-generated video tapes as ‘cream’, to give the video equipment to a select group such as the gifted class, in spite of insistent studies that demonstrate that learning technologies make their greatest impact among “students at risk”. At Carnegie Junior Highs School [those kids in room 45] is making great strides in demonstrating the equitable nature of the power of video tape.”
Middle school Special Ed kids saved a television station just by being the kids they were.
These are those kids:
I had arrived in Oklahoma City in March of 1993. I was intending to stay a short while as my professional file was being reassemble after some papers were lost in the bowels of the Los Angeles Unified School District and the State Department of Education in Oklahoma had the power to make an apathetic system like Los Angels interested in an inconsequential to it teacher problem, and one of the things I chose to busy myself with, besides what brought in a salary, was getting involved in the fight for Gay rights as I had been previously and this had me doing political cartoons for the local Gay news rag.
I had brought a cartoon to the editor of the paper one day and broached the idea of a cable access Gay News program as I had had experience and some degree of training to produce one and it was just a matter of finding the best people. I had been a recent arrival while the paper and its staff were well connected and could find the right people, more so than I could. I was sure Oklahoma City had to have a community access arrangement with the local cable company that would allow studio access after training but before that we could produce the shows ourselves wherever we had the space and deliver tapes to the station which is what we initially had to do.
Since we knew each other from the paper and local Gay Rights activities, and considering we were friends I took the idea to her and, when I had the chance, would stop by the offices to see if she had found anyone who might be interested. We spoke of the format of the show, where we would get our stories which was a no brainer as we both worked for the local Gay rag with its wire services.
Our first meetings of people interested in being involved took place at a small eatery on The 39th Street Strip that never had much luck no matter the cuisine or desired patronage. We bounced ideas around and the editor introduced some people she had rounded up as I did with the one or two people I brought and we discussed the program as we ate.
Our news source would be the wires the paper was connected with, and many times we spent up to the last minute before taping, sometimes finishing copy and editing some as we taped. Crew had to improvise equipment, initially using an ironing board as the tripod, make the wobbly secure, and step in to make something happen that otherwise wouldn’t.
Very reminiscent of Face-Off except it had had real studio equipment.
It was a group of people working as what appeared to be a team, an improv troupe, people quietly making a difference. There was no need for a boss. It was collaborative as I came with video production experience which once learned by others from experience made my skills redundant so that I was just a talking head, others came with writing skills and an artistic camera eye. We solved problems together and produced a weekly show.
Our video editor was a school teacher from Norman, Oklahoma, who would edit our raw footage on the equipment he had in his audio-visual class at the high school where he taught and, considering this was Oklahoma in 1993 and he was using school equipment to edit what any person at that time and even now might claim was tantamount to pornography and he could have been embarrassingly dismissed from the system and profession. Naively or bravely, he always came through.
It was all very grassroots with occasional exercises of authority assuaged for peace in the house.
I had already been a teacher for some twenty-plus years and as a Union officer and activist had had to speak to crowds planned or spontaneously, friendly or hostile, and with experience both behind and in front of the camera, I was at ease with taping a show.
We had just finished covering the International Gay Rodeo at the state fair grounds and were heading back to the house we used as a studio to review raw footage and assemble a special show about the Rodeo. At the time my transportation was foot, pedal, or public, so it took me longer to arrive than people with cars. The editor of the paper, my co-host on the show, was not pleased with the rodeo coverage for some reason although there was really nothing other than clips of the activity and few interviews, so I arrived expecting a party like atmosphere only to arrive at a locked door and being informed by the person opening it that I was no longer wanted upon which declaration the door was shut and locked. Waiting on the porch resulted in a person coming out and informing me “they” had voted me off the show when I had no idea there was to be such a vote nor that I was not going to be allowed any involvement with it. Mine was just to accept how “they” the Star Chamber. voted.
For thirty years I never knew what had happened and being Boston Irish Catholic just assumed as we do that I had done something unspecified for which I felt guilt without knowing what it was I had done, and doing the mental flagellation thing where I asked forgiveness if I ever thought the motivation of others was wrong and I was being too judgmental. My impression that this was a control thing was a source of my guilt until recently when posting a reminiscence of an event, I was corrected by the person I have wondered about as the JD Vance like defenses made things even worse.
While admitting that she had always credited me with the idea for the show, she never made it known her intention was to run the show and to own it and her justification for this being a correct action was that, as I stated before, I had brought the idea to my friend for us to work on together mainly because I had the technical expertise while she had community contacts, But as she now states,
“We did meet more than once but I worked with the people I put together to get it done.”
In order to make extra money, the editor taught Country Western dancing at a local Gay Country bar. As we worked together on the newspaper, she brought up her idea to publish an instruction book and would love me to do illustrations. I am not a Country dancer and I had never really studied Country Western dancers, still or in motion, and to illustrate to book I would have needed a copy of the manuscript to read through and decide what I was best able to draw. I had the manuscript in my possession throughout the process, so she could not publish it without the illustrations unless she gave up on the idea. I did not ask for money as she was a friend asking for my talent to benefit her so my finishing the illustrations and publishing on my own would have been possible a huge betrayal. I could have bypassed her and stolen her idea while telling everybody about the book being her idea with no benefit to her.
Making matters even more worse was that in denying the events of that night she refers to a vote about my ghosting and that only she and the man who has since passed voted in my favor. She will not inform me of that vote which opens everyone to suspicion even people I had assumed for 18 years were friends without knowing the action they had taken against me nor upon what a decision was based.
Unless there was a secret board for whom I had been unknowingly working, with me not present and two votes in my favor, my being thrown off my own show unceremoniously lies at the feet of the camera and sound man?
As she went on to explain,
“I felt so bad about that but it was before we had incorporated Tri-Pride Productions, and had a board” compounding things by mentioning, “You were voted off by a majority of those working on the show”, who were, at the time me, her, Phyl, the camera guy, the lighting guy, and the video editor from Norman. The only two no votes were from me and Phil Byrum. I always wanted to tell you that, but it was going to be hurtful though and I just couldn’t do it.”
Better to have me voted out by unknown people who made a major decision and with whom I continued to live like the ignorant spouse who is the only one in the neighborhood who doesn’t know his spouse cheated on him.
There is more, but suffice it to say that Joan Crawford and I have similar experience with rodeos.
I saw signs, went instantly into activist Union member protection mode, hoping I was not seeing what was becoming clearly seen.
To that end, I wrote a letter to the local Gay newspaper that connected her and me, and have to assume that as of that date and since, as this was known to her before publication as she was the editor and has been in print for 21 years with no rebuttal, as editor, she must have read it and approved its printing or she was very lax in that and in this situation.
The letter as published in the Gayly, Volume 11, number 23, December 1, 1993.
“As the originator of the concept for a cable access news program, I would like to thank the Gayly for its efforts to promote the program. I also thought I would offer some background on where the idea came from and some of the philosophy behind it.
I come from out of state. I have lived in, and enjoyed, the 20th Century. Being Raised in Boston/New York areas, and having taught school there as well as in both Northern and Southern California I have enjoyed the rights of American citizenship. There were always those who, for their reasons and prejudices, sought to limit my rights, but the atmosphere existed that allowed me to maintain the rights I had and work, with a reasonable hope off success, for those I still did not have recognized.
In Boston and California I did not have to hide who I was. And conversations about my home life were as acceptable as anyone else’s. In Los Angeles I could chair the union’s Gay and Lesbian Committee, march in a Gay Parade under a banner that proudly proclaimed I was a teacher, and I could stand with a group of Gay men and women in front of TV cameras on “Coming Out Day” and come out as a Gay teacher. I could choose if I wanted to and how far out of the closet I wanted to, come.
When I came to Oklahoma, although I was still in the United States, it seemed I had to give up quite a few rights to be here. It was the same country, but with different rules. Besides the law that labeled me an automatic felon for what I was regardless of what I did or did not do, I encountered an attitude and a form of Christianity that seemed based on hatred of those who were different whether that difference was based on race, color, creed, or whom you fell in love with.
I noticed that in the news, whereas in other places I’d heard the negative along with the positive, in Oklahoma I only heard references to Gays when there was a condemnation, a crime committed in which there was a tantalizing hint that one or both the perpetrators or the victim might be Gay, or if the crime was a pointedly defined perversion or could be used to imply there was one so you would be sure to stay tuned. The many good things done by, for, and with the Gay people go unmentioned and this implies there is nothing to report.
By correcting this void with a cable Gay news program I wanted to accomplish two things. I wanted to keep our Gay Community informed about ourselves, the positive things we do, and help keep us in touch with what is happening elsewhere. If we don’t hear the good stuff, we may tend to believe it isn’t there. And very importantly, I wanted to let the young Gay people who may be struggling against a limited image off Gays- one controled by those who care the least- who are attempting to accept their difference to see some positive role models and accomplishments. Too often the younger Gays and their friends who are also facing problems of acceptance have to snuggle for self-esteem in an atmosphere that denies it.
And if as a by-product the larger Community begins to shed the fears and prejudices born of ignorance, well, then, I’ll take that too.
It is time that the blackout of positive news about the gay Community be lifted. There’s a lot of good news out there, and now that there’s Gay new program in Oklahoma City, I hope it won’t be long before other cities follow suit.
There’s enough talent in the Community to accomplish that. Perhaps in time there could be other types of shows to showcase our community: talk shows, variety shows, even (now, wouldn’t this be bold?) a Gay and Lesbian soap. The field is there and so is the talent.”
In one person’s an attempt to have power, the students I brought with me in spirit to another experience beneficial to their peers were pushed aside and what they could contribute by proxy was sacrificed for someone’s ego, and, as I said, I defend my students.