Standing Up to Life

Chapter 15:

SCHOOL FLEW BY quickly the next day. When we got to English Class, Mr. Tamera gave Amy, Nikki, Ashley, and I passes to down go to the office. He wouldn't say why. It was actually kind of mysterious that he wouldn't tell us – so we all discussed it as we went downstairs to the office.

"Obviously it's about the project," I said.

"Yeah it probably is, but what about it?" Ashley asked.

"Well maybe we're getting rewarded for a really good job?" Nikki suggested.

"Let's hope so," Amy said.

We reached the office door and walked in. The principal, Mrs. Hinther, was standing there, "How are you all doing?"

"Okay," Nikki said.

"Good. Would you four please step into the conference room here?" She asked.

We followed her into a long room where we saw a big screen TV was sitting recessed into the wall. I'd been in the room earlier this year, but I hadn't noticed the TV before. Around the table in the conference room we saw eight other adults talking to each other. She introduced us to them, "This is Mr. Jameson, the superintendent for our district. Here we have Mr. Winters, he's the school board president." She continued rattling off names of a couple more school board members, a newspaper reporter, and two television reporters. One of them was from Mr. Sanders' TV station.

"Well, you're all probably wondering why we brought you in here?" She asked as she motioned for us to take a seat in four empty chairs.

We nodded.

"Well, let's just say Mr. Tamera showed the other English teachers your video. They all thought that I should see it. I was incredibly impressed by your project, and I decided that these ladies and gentlemen should see your film too. Could you guys give your presentation just like you did the other day?"

"Okay," I said. "But do you have all of our stuff?" I asked.

"It's all right here," She said handing me the stack of our stuff.

The four of us huddled for a second before starting our presentation again. Talk about unexpected! We managed to do at least as good of a job introducing the video as we did Wednesday, and then I started the video. I spent time watching the reactions of everyone on this showing again.

I especially enjoyed the reporter from Mr. Sanders station. She just seemed to be enthralled by it, laughing at all of the right times. Even the Superintendent and the School Board members seemed to be unable to control themselves. Everyone in the room seemed to thoroughly enjoy the movie.

When the video was over they all gave us a round of applause. There were all sorts of back patting comments, and we got to thoroughly enjoy the attention and all of the accolades. They ended up telling us that they wanted us to present it at the school board meeting, and maybe at a state board meeting as well. Wow, talk about more than we planned on.

They also asked us if we would mind talking to the three reporters there. We talked amongst ourselves and told them that we would talk to the newspaper reporter and the reporter from Mr. Sanders first. If the other one wanted to talk to us next week we would do so then, but the one TV station deserved first crack.

The other reporter was very gracious about it and said that seemed more than fair to her, and that she completely understood.

A phone call was made to each of our parents, in my case they called my dad on his cell phone, and then we sat down for interviews.

"So first of all, what are your names?" The reporter for the TV station asked.

"I'm Amy."

"I'm Ashley,"