Serendipity happens!

Right in the middle of the school last year I had a lark of an idea.

It had been one of the least productive and most distressing school years that everyone I know had ever endured. Masks were tiresome, physically and socially. Student engagement was painfully strained. Academic work was difficult to accomplish. It was a most unpleasant time to be in school.

And I don't know whence this idea came, but I thought 'hey, I should analyze and explain the really bad joke from our morning announcements.'

It started as me screencastifying a really lousy slide (with a small window of me, on video, in the corner).

I took some real comedy theory, sillied it up a little, played it straight as joke explanation and my colleague put it on show.

Twenty-two installments later, we've added a superhero, are in the middle of an episodic story, my colleague spends an hour or two editing each 3-minute episode, we've incorporated students and the choir into the story, and almost everybody loves it.

Our goal for this year...get students to take over production, so we're starting that process right now.

It has been great fun. More importantly, I think it helped us all have a little bit of joy in a difficult season.

One student recently told me, "I don't like [the show] because I don't think it's that funny, but I appreciate that you do it. It's been good for the school...kind of bringing everybody together a little."

So here's S3 E03 of JotDA Guy.
It's a retrospective--starting with that very first episode, and adds a little more to our on-going story. (Listen for the fantastic musical interlude near the end.)