Wiscasset school staff have another hit on their hands. And this one’s got Cindy Collamore on horseback telling jokes.

The first video sending students positive messages and music during the pandemic debuted on YouTube April 6 and had 1,884 views as of Sunday night, May 3. A second video, with some music plus kind comments and sharing what staff have been doing, debuted last week on Vimeo. As before, a link was shared at wiscassetschools.org. And by Sunday night, the new video was up to 459 views.

At 13 minutes and 43 seconds, this one is more than four times the length of the first. “(It’s) a bit longer than originally planned, but we wanted to include everyone that wanted to participate,” Wiscasset Elementary School Title One teacher Erica Davis said in email responses. She and daughter Hannah worked on the video.

It sprang from staff brainstorming on Zoom and became a mother-daughter effort for Davis and fellow Lincoln Academy graduate Hannah, an Emerson College sophomore studying visual and media arts. Hannah returned home in March when Emerson switched to online courses only, due to the pandemic. She finished the spring semester last week, her mother said.

She was excited her daughter wanted to help with the video. “It was neat to see her immerse herself in the work,” Davis added. “She had the idea of underlying the music throughout the video and made the decision to use the songs some of the teachers had chosen on their clips as the background music. She then took the time to align their clips with the music! We have had lots of feedback from staff and parents – all has been positive! I think the video came out great, there are the obvious flaws of poor video and sound quality in some of the clips – not everyone has the same technology to use or cell and internet service but the messages teachers sent were just incredible.”

Davis asked fellow staff to be positive and creative and to try to stay under a minute. “Then our amazing staff got to work creating wonderful messages via videos and photos and sent them to me. I compiled them all and handed them off to Hannah who spent many hours editing clips, adding music and cleaning up the visual and audio as best she could. And voila – staff video #2 was made!”   Collamore, WES’s longtime administrative assistant, is shown riding daughter Noelle Fairfield’s horse and telling jokes that feature horse puns. In other clips, Michaela West makes cookies and others dance, sing, or both. Several staff encourage students by example to spend time outside or learn to do something new. “Stay active, stay healthy and stay positive,” WES physical education teacher Joel Grindle says while out walking.