Busy Bees: Learning Public Health Through Certifiably L.I.T.
Mr. Bloore teaches public health in his Certifiably L.I.T. class. Mariano Lopez SY is pictured fourth from the right in the back row.
August 29, 2019
This summer, I participated in a project at St. Benedict’s led by Mr. Gary Bloore called “Certifiably LIT.”
The goal of the project, according to Mr. Bloore, was to educate the class of the importance of public health, so we could become emissaries of the ideas.
Mr. Bloore got started on the idea a few months ago after a conversation with the director of the Rutgers University School of Nursing.
One of the main goals of the project was to make it student-led, so that students would learn how to conduct research and compose an informative, effective public health video.
Each of us had input and a part to play. Due to my experience in research I became the head of researching and had to work with many other students in order to keep track of all the discoveries we made. While I was compiling the research and tracking resources, the others were busy making the plot and editing the videos. I was astonished at how Mr. Bloore took control of the students. He ensured that everyone was comfortable and had a voice. Everyone was giving out ideas and Mr. Bloore kept the momentum running by asking more and more questions. Everyone was having fun coming up with idea after idea in order to make a plot for the video.
The following week the class worked on the video about infection control. The class was split into two groups, I worked alongside a team of three students who were in charge of editing, and the rest were actors or prop managers with Mr. Bloore at the camera. I was surprised with the level of expertise that Mr. Bloore had with the camera. He made short clips of video that looked like a professional photographer took the shots.. We used a software called Premiere Pro. No one in my team had any experience with it, but nevertheless we had to start as soon as possible. We had to watch basic tutorials about Premiere Pro and experimented with the software. Premiere Pro was a very powerful application and crashed the main computer system so instead I took it upon myself to help Mr. Bloore with the editing on iMovie.
Finally, came the day of the video presentation. Mr. Bloore had two questionnaires prepared for the presentation and a raffle giveaway to entice the participants to answer the questionnaires. The class was split into pairs in order to manage the approximately 600 student participants in the SBP’s Prep and Middle divisions present for the video and passing out the questionnaires and pencils. After the presentation the program was over and Mr. Bloore posted the infection control video.
It was a true joy being able to work alongside many of my peers and learn about their personalities. And it was great to be able to come together and work as a team to get the work done.
