Peter Dolan, John Oteri, Abdel Sepulveda, and students on the production crew of Superintendent Salutes. Photo from the Malden Public Schools Twitter page.
MATV (Malden Access TV) has partnered up with the Malden Public Schools Superintendent John Oteri for the new show “Superintendent Salutes”, which he will be hosting. As explained by Oteri, the main inspiration behind the show was to “highlight the great work that [ him and others working in education] do in the public schools “in order to get their message out to be recognized by the community.” He wanted to do this because he feels that “a lot of people just take the public schools for granted” especially while their kids are enrolled in the system.
Going all the way back to the month of December, Oteri first pitched the idea of getting the show on cable. The production team then helped “walk [him] through it “and were also on board with the show. The only factor that set back time in the filming process was the “preliminary work” consisting of “the beginning [and] intro”, music which was all in the hands of the MATV production. Through the suggestion of the MATV team, Oteri invited two principals on the very first episode as a way to introduce what their roles consist of.
From time to time, he will also invite guests on the show such as principals, teachers, and students because it “allows the schools to connect better through the community and to families [or] parents” and even the students.
Before transitioning to Malden, he did a similar thing as a principal back at Somerville. Around “six or seven times a year [he] would bring on students”. He also plans on monthly visits from students from Malden High and the surrounding middle schools as an opportunity to showcase their achievements as he believes “that [students] are the future”. For the much younger kids, there is some precaution as he is fully aware that they tend to get nervous and easily uncomfortable on a film setting environment.
As Oteri previously worked on a similar show in Somerville, he takes that experience as an “advantage” because he already has a routine in mind of what to do and has a better understanding “of how to work on camera live”.
A segment that will be included regularly on the broadcast, “Ask the Superintendent”, will give residents in the Malden community an opportunity to send a question to which he will answer.
One thing that Oteri has started looking forward to the most is “hearing different stories of [the] kids success and how it makes them feel on how the schools have kinda guided them and fostered that success [for them].” This aspect can also give viewers a chance to see the connection between the kids and what they can achieve while attending Malden High, which is the type of feedback Oteri wants to hear.
Junior and Vice President of the Movie Production Club here at MHS, Kristy Yang is apart of the group of students that are working behind the scenes during the filming process. Her role consists of “planning alongside “ with the presidents of the club about what each of “the members should try on next” along with editing and finalizing the scenes of “ the videos that [they] make.” Taking classes a while back on “camera shooting” and the control room has given her a lot of insight of what she’s supposed to do. She recalled that her favorite part of the process is the cooperation among everyone when “working together as a crew to create videos that people would enjoy” and finds that feeling of it to be “nice” of completing the video that they can identify as theirs.
