Students in a marketing class at Boyle County High School created an entertainment broadcast as part of a national competition for Reach and Teach.

The broadcast is on the Reach and Teach YouTube page, titled “Campus Tour Season 3 Episode 5: Boyle County High School.”

The video is competing against seven others from high schools around the country, including from Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Alabama. The broadcast with the most views and points from judges gets a $1,000 educational grant.

Reach and Teach is a national educational program that brings real-world experience to high school classrooms in the form of concerts and entertainment broadcasts. The campus tour broadcast competition is a new development out of the necessity for virtual learning caused by COVID-19.

The marketing class at Boyle County High School is project-based, and the broadcast was the main project. Students have been working on it since September. Marketing teacher Amanda Huchison said she partnered with Reach and Teach because of its potential for real-world learning.

“Bringing real-world experience to the classroom has better learning outcomes for the students versus just traditional instructions,” Huchison said. “They are actually learning by doing the marketing efforts, not just learning about them.”

This semester is the second season the marketing class has done. In the spring semester, the class won second place and got more than 2,000 views.

This year’s broadcast has four segments and is 14 minutes 44 seconds long. Reach and Teach provided a list of segment names the schools can choose from, and students decide what the segment will consist of. Boyle County’s segments focus mainly on food, with “Extra Eats,” a pizza-eating competition; “Cooking with Coach;” “Challenge Accepted,” a chef contest; and “Fact or Cap,” where students guess if a “fact” is true or false.

With the assignment to choose their target market, the class chose to appeal to their fellow high school students, who Huchison said are major foodies.

Luis Sanchez, a student in the class, competed in the pizza-eating competition. He said the class was hands-on and time-intensive, but that they all had fun with it.

“We look back at it and it’s just fun memories because we remember how it went and the process to get there,” Sanchez said.

Each of the 30 students has different duties. Several groups were in charge of different segments, and many students helped film, edit, and promote the video.

Student Ella Swafford helped with promotion and making the pizza-eating segment. Her group also created a website, helped make commercials, posters, and promote the broadcast on social media. The website has a QR code to the video and a $10 Amazon gift card giveaway contest for anyone who likes and comments on the video.

“I think filming was super fun,” Swafford said. “Watching that come through and spending time with all these people was a lot of fun.”

Swafford also helped secure two $100 sponsors. That money went toward promotion and video supplies. Swafford said it taught her how to manage sponsorship money and how to estimate their budget.

“They analyze the results as well, and change based on the response to their marketing efforts,” Huchison said.

Huchison said the students had creative freedom, but also had to manage their time, set plans in advance, and execute strategy within a time frame. They had to overcome obstacles like in the real world, their biggest obstacle being COVID-19. They had a strict deadline and learned to problem-solve when one student had to be quarantined.

“It is going to stick with them no matter what employer they go to,” Huchison said. “The soft skills of being able to be flexible and problem-solve will apply to any career they go into, not just marketing.”

In addition to view count, videos are judged on likes, comments, the existence of sponsors, editing, sound quality, and how and where it was filmed. The competition will conclude on Dec. 13 and the winner will be announced Dec. 17.