05/01/2026
Excited for the premiere! Hope the community will join us to celebrate their efforts!
Rikki Santer Ohio Arts Council Buckeye Local Schools
Buckeye Local Schools
Buckeye Local students chronicle school district’s history
RAYLAND – Next week residents of the Buckeye Local School District will have an opportunity to learn about the origins and development of the school system while also witnessing the hard work of a group of students who set out to record it.
At 7 p.m. Monday at the Wells Township Community Center, students in Buckeye Local Junior High School’s gifted program will present “Evolution of Panther Pride,” a short documentary they have produced under the direction of Stephanie Crust, gifted intervention specialist at the school; and Rikki Santer, an Ohio Teaching Artist with the Ohio Arts Council.
Since then, Santer, a former journalist and public school teacher specializing in film studies, met with the students weekly to mentor them in the documentary genre of filmmaking.
Santer said she started by conducting a survey to determine what the students knew about documentaries.
From there, she explained that films inspired by real life can be traced to the late 1890s with the Lumiere brothers of France among its earliest pioneers.
Santer noted since 1942, an Oscar has been awarded each year to a documentary found to be the best of its genre.
Crust said, “Most of us knew almost nothing about those kinds of movies, but after she showed us several of them and taught us about the history and the different types of these kind of films, we began to get excited about making our own.”
“Each Monday when she visited, we learned about the different components of documentaries as well as the cinematic techniques that filmmakers use to create meaning, like camera angles, B-roll footage and editing moves,” she added.
Camryn Dutton, a sixth grader involved with the project, said, “We started with the basics, what a documentary is and how to work a camera.”
But to produce a documentary, the students needed a central focus.
Superintendent of Schools Coy Sudvary, Buckeye Local High School Principal Luke Parsons and Wells Township Trustee Rodney Roe were invited to share ideas.
Crust said several topics were discussed, but ultimately the students chose one: What is the history of Buckeye Local Schools and where are we now?
She noted students took on various tasks, with some interviewing about 24 local officials and residents, others operating the camera, some serving as announcers and still more writing the copy that intersperses the many guests’ comments.
“It’s been really exciting to see them take charge and take pride in what they have done,” said Santer.
Samantha Foldi, another sixth grader, said she was very nervous when conducting her first one-to-one interview for the video but became more comfortable doing the second one.
Many of the tasks involved learning new skills.
Stephen Cochran, an eighth grader who stepped up with Ayden Firm to learn the process of film editing, said, “There was a lot of stuff I learned, especially with editing.
He noted a score for the documentary was drawn from copyright-free music offered by a website, and various selections were reviewed to find the music that best fit the documentary’s tone.
“A lot of teamwork was definitely put into the project,” said Cochran.
Offering advice to the students in using computers to do the editing was Dan Davis, a career technical instructor who teaches a video production class at the high school.
Davis acknowledged the sixth, seventh and eighth graders in Crust’s class may be inspired to enroll in his course when they enter high school.
“Hopefully we can build on that,” he said.
Crust noted the project involved work not seen directly in the film, such as preparing loglines and treatments, or summaries of the film that documentary-makers use to solicit financial backers. Students also designed and posted advertisements for their video’s unveiling.
Foldi said she also learned from the research done for it.
“I didn’t know we once had one-room schoolhouses (in the district),” she said, revealing one of the many details the documentary will share.
Photo Caption:
Students in Buckeye Local Junior High School’s gifted program have worked with Rikki Santer, an Ohio Teaching Artist with the Ohio Arts Council, to produce a short documentary on the history of Buckeye Local schools to be unveiled at 7 p.m. Monday at the Wells Township Community Center. Among those involved were, from left: Grace Mori, Maisie Wilson, Ella Lennox, Ellie Ricer, Jack Martin, Camryn Dutton and Wyatt Eastham; and back: Raelyn Glover, Sutton Monroe, Isabella Glauser, Brooklyn Burress, Sophia Vitek, Stephen Cochran, Ayden Firm, Robert Glauser and Kyle Beranek. Samantha Foldi and Camden Bell also participated in the project.
