From left: Middle school students Silje Morse, Jackson Pearson and Kasey Whitaker interview Seth Bader, educational program manager for See Stories, who provided the voice of "Pirate Steve," the statue outside of Stikine Drug. The students created documentary films on various topics like tourism, fish tendering and the local economy that could be used in future curriculum provided by the See Stories program for schools statewide.
Look out, Martin Scorsese You've got some up-and-coming competition on your hands.
Stikine Middle School students spent the past two weeks recording video footage and conducting interviews as part of the See Stories project, which creates documentaries to tell the stories of Alaska.
What began 10 years ago as a way to tell Alaska's diverse stories through videos and podcasts from a youth perspective has grown into an award-winning program that has produced 150 short documentaries and podcasts by 6,450 students from throughout the state.
The program's mission is to "build inclusive communities through film and storytelling."
See Stories education programs manager Seth Bader worked with middle school teacher Laura Davies to bring the program to Wrangell. Though now based in Juneau, Bader worked for the Alaska Crossings program in Wrangell from 2018 until it closed last year.
"We work in a lot of Alaska Native communities," Bader said in between helping Davies' students May 17 during the editing process. "We've had a long ongoing program in Angoon, for example. We make relationships with teachers or administrators or whoever is interested in working with us on a workshop like this."
The workshop lasts typically two weeks, he said. Students are given the tools and guidance to create videos that last for a few minutes depicting life where they live. The reception Bader and others in See Stories get can be quite different depending on the communities they approach.
"Alaska is such a diverse state that the communities we work in are always different," he said. "(Last) fall, I was in Angoon, which is a completely Alaska Native community. After that, we were in Chevak (northwest of Bethel), so ... it's sometimes interesting when you have white people coming to your community with cameras."
Bader's goal is to build trust and help people realize his job is to give kids the tools and education they will need to record their stories.
In Wrangell, students were very enthusiastic about the project and had a wealth of topics they wanted to cover.
"Jackson Pearson did a lot on his own ahead of the game. Silja (Morse) got both her grandpas to speak about the old timber mill," Davies said. "They went out to the old mill and took pictures."
She added that the students have been engaged the entire time, putting in work even after school. "They've been fully engaged, working together, problem solving," Davies said. They came up with their topics, they came up with their questions, they came up with the people to interview. It's really student driven. They're 100% bought in."
The videos were finished last week and were shown at Harbor Light Assembly of God Church on Friday. Davies is looking for opportunities to show the videos again. They will also be hosted on the See Stories website at seestoriesalaska.org.
Bader said the next step with the films created in the workshops is to write curriculum around them so that teachers throughout the state can create lessons around each video.
"Say, for example, you're a teacher in Fairbanks and you want to show a film on commercial fishing in Southeast Alaska," he said. "What is really cool is that we've found that students (are more engaged) when watching films made by other students from other areas, so we create curriculum around some of the films."
Sophia Martinsen, 14, wanted to tell the story of fish tendering in Southeast and why it's important, especially in Wrangell.
"I interviewed some commercial fisherman, like Everett Meissner, who's a deckhand, and Winston Davies, who's a gillnetter," she said. When she heard about "See Stories," Martinsen said she was "interested and excited" about making a film and seeing what it's like to interview people.
Asking questions hasn't always been her favorite thing to do unless she needs to know something, but working in teams helped her to embrace the process.
"The whole class did it together," Martinsen said. "It didn't make (me) nervous because (I) got to see other people do it, then it got more exciting to try it (myself)."
Pearson, 13, isn't sure where his idea to focus on Wrangell's tourism economy came from, though his father was a tour bus driver in Sitka and that might have had some influence. He spoke to various business owners and officials that could relay how tourism affects the town's economy.
"We interviewed Jake Harris, the (Stikine Inn) owner. We interviewed Michell Lopez at Michelle's Taste of Asia. Then we interviewed Bonnie Richie (owner of Ritchie's Rocks). We interviewed Mason Villarma (borough finance director). We interviewed Virginia Oliver," Pearson said.
Coming up with people to interview and the questions to ask was hard, but not as hard as the editing process, he said. Videos need to be edited down into a few minutes of content.
"It's probably going to be six or seven minutes long," Pearson said. "I think we took two or three hours of footage. There's a lot of cutting. It's really difficult to do. It takes hours and hours to edit to get the good piece you want in there."
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