Lebanon High School students win help with a school brand revamp in national video contest

Students in Lebanon School District's Mass Communications class produced a video for the Jostens Epic School Revamp Contest, describing why they believe their school is in need of a revamp through the rebrand of their culture.

Lebanon School District placed third in the nationwide contest, awarding the school with services from Jostens on how to revamp, as well as an invitation for three attendees to the Josten's Renaissance Global Conference in Orlando, where attendees will learn more about how to brand a school and develop an identity.

With the revamp, the school will look to unite and build behind the identity of the Cedars, the school mascot, a reference to the great Cedars of Lebanon.

The students' video, just over six minutes long, gives background on the school and interviews students, administrators and an alumni on the school's need of a unified identity. School discipline statistics were used to highlight that lack of identity. They also keyed into the school's atrium as a location that would benefit from rebranding.

Around a dozen students in the class worked together on the video under the supervision of Brittany Rodriguez and Zach Musser, both teachers of the Mass Communications program, which has expanded in the last year.

The team of students only had about one week to shoot, cut and produce the video, as they didn't know that the contest was happening until from the deadline. Together, alongside their regularly scheduled coursework, the students worked in teams to tackle the project.

While the class had to change structure for a few days, Rodriguez said that it was part of the benefit of the Mass Communications program.

"The nice thing with this class is a lot of opportunities come in for us, and this was a great opportunity to show them, oh you know this is how you conduct an interview, this how you do the camera this way," she said. "So it was really nice, a really good project-based learning opportunity."

While the teachers assisted students with the storyline and vision for the video, the final product was largely in the hands of the students.

Musser said one big contribution was the students' idea to go around the school and ask classmates what is a Cedar. Many of the students in the video would answer the question with "a tree" or "I don't know," highlighting the need for a unified identity.

Junior Amy Liriano said that getting interviews and reactions from students wasn't something abnormal for the class, as it's something that they do for morning announcement, which airs at the school each thursday. She believes that the work they do in the class does help to establish some kind of identity within the school.

"I feel like it definitely helps because we pull from different groups and different cultures we involve inside the video. Like some of our videos do include Spanish speakers and sometimes they do speak Spanish in the videos. So I do think that helps out with the community a bit more."

Musser said when they first started the Mass Communications class, they talked a lot with students about how to be the voice of the community and centered that as the driving question for what they do, and he too hopes that getting other students' perspectives on what is going on in their community helps to build that culture.

Coaching from Jostens on how to create a school brand has already begun, according to Rodriguez, with a survey to be given out to students on where the district is right now and what a Cedar should look like when they graduate.

In 2013, Lebanon's mascot, Rooty the Cedar Tree, was featured in the Hulu documentary show, Behind the Mask.

Daniel Larlham Jr. is a reporter for the Lebanon Daily News. Reach him at DLarlham@LDNews.com or on X @djlarlham.

This article originally appeared on Lebanon Daily News: Lebanon High School students place third in a national video contest