Shooting the next installment of Good News for Your Eau Claire Schools, which has a segment on cooking with food from the farmers market.

As partnership coordinator at DeLong Middle School, Terry Piper Thompson worried about how little community members knew about special projects and programs that were happening within the Eau Claire Area School District.

“I just had an idea that we needed to make sure we were telling our good stories to the community,” Thompson said.

Thompson found the perfect way to do so through Community Television.

The project she proposed is a series of 30-minute videos called “Good News from Your Eau Claire Schools,” the first of which aired in June of this year.

In that debut video, it takes us through three programs that many community members don’t know about.

The first is SAGE, which stands for Student Achievement Guarantee in Education. SAGE is a state-funded grant program that provides teachers more one-on-one time with students in high-poverty schools. The second mentioned was Prime Products, a program in which students at Delong Middle School learn about sales and marketing by producing products in the classroom and then selling them at local malls. The third program mentioned was Real Life Academy. This program aims to teach Eau Claire High School students about money management in the “real life”.

“We’ve gotten very nice feedback, a nice positive response from staff in our district,” Thompson said. “They appreciate that we’re there to tell their story.”

Thompson hopes to be able to air at least four videos per year, each containing an elementary, middle school, and high school piece.

A similar project has seen much success in the La Crosse school district.

Feeling the same need to inform community members of special projects and programs taking place in the classrooms, Superintendent of the La Crosse school district Jerry Kimber proposed a 30-minute cable program called “Kids First,” now in its tenth year of production.

Hosted by Kimber and two student co-hosts, each episode of “Kids First” contains roughly four mini-stories. Past episodes have featured items such as student service-learning activities, science programs, and special field trips.

Once a month “Kids First” features a student spotlight, which highlights the success of one outstanding student in the La Crosse school district.

“I try to keep the focus on students as much as possible,” Kimber said.

“Kids First” has been very popular among La Crosse community members, and just wrapped up its one-hundredth episode.

After receiving an overwhelmingly positive response from the community, Kimber created “Lessons Learned in the Classroom,” a 10-minute once-a-week podcast in which teachers tell stories about their teaching experiences to the community.

“People enjoy learning about the programs,” Kimber said. “People want to hear the kids.”

With “Good News from Your Eau Claire Schools,” “Kids First,” and “Lessons Learned in the Classroom” available, community members can learn about all the special projects and programs going on in their area schools, and have more opportunities to be involved.

“I hope people in the community can realize, by watching these shows, how great the students and staff are in our school district,” Thompson said. “Budgets and resources continue to shrink, but the quality of education that the students are getting remains really strong and positive.”

Good News from Your Eau Claire Schools airs Wednesdays and Fridays at 9 am on CTV, channel 97 (analog) or 994 (digital). You can also view them online at www.ecasd.k12.wi.us/goodnews/.