Posted on: Friday, July 23, 2004
School kids help train firefighters
By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist
Fire Capt. Jason Takara had a daring idea: Instead of trying to conduct training sessions on the new fire code inspection manual at each of the 42 O'ahu fire stations, what if he put the information on DVD? That way, firefighters could go through it on their own schedule, pause if they had to jump up for an alarm, and review chapters as needed.
Takara turned to his childhood friend Mark Miyamoto for help. Miyamoto teaches English and multimedia at Washington Middle School. He and Takara have been friends since they were students at Washington "way back when."
"I said, yes, of course we can make a DVD," Miyamoto said. "And then we had to figure out how to do it."
Miyamoto presented the challenge to his seventh- and eighth-grade multimedia students. Seventh-graders Alyssa Buote and Ruby Ching and eighth-grader Rosaleen Nguyen volunteered for the project.
"This was just a tremendous learning opportunity for them," Miyamoto says. "It involves problem-solving, a lot of decision-making, and it's a lesson in the real world. It fits in this whole discussion about education and relevance."
The fire captain borrowed school equipment to shoot the video, and he came in with a script and story board. The girls carefully
edited three hours of footage into a 40-minute DVD divided into eight chapters. It was a painstaking process that took two months.
They lost all their data twice. They were working with a subject that had no inherent interest for them — unlike something fun, like a music video. And it was much longer and more detailed than any of their previous assignments.
The girls came in on Saturdays, and when summer vacation started, they kept coming to school to finish the DVD.
"Otherwise I would just be home watching TV," Ruby says modestly.
"Sometimes I would forget who I was dealing with," Takara says. "We'd be discussing something, and I had to remind myself that these are middle school students. It was unreal. They did such a great job."
When Takara submitted video that didn't meet the students' standards, they asked for a reshoot.
"We didn't like this one part," Alyssa said. "It made us carsick. And you could see the dirt on the dashboard. So we told them how we wanted it."
Fire Chief Attilio Leonardi thanked the girls for their service at a small ceremony this week. Takara gets almost misty talking about showing the finished product to department brass.
"No way we could have done something like this when we were that age," he says reverently.
"Well, you didn't have the technology," Rosaleen says.
Takara shakes his head, "Even so. What these students did was amazing."
Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.
