The Teacher Salary Project

Received this today and believe in the work. Thought I would share with you.

I am writing on behalf of Academy Award-winning filmmaker Vanessa Roth, co-founder of 826 National Nínive Calegari, and writer Dave Eggers. They are the Director and Co-Producers of the feature-length documentary The Teacher Salary Project. We wanted to reach out to you in the hopes that you may be interested in getting involved in our production.

The Teacher Salary Project will be a documentary film, a national outreach campaign, and the only digital archive of the stories of teachers' lives. In the end we will have a community-built movement that tells the true stories of hardworking and effective teachers in order to change the public perception, support, and financial rewards that accompany the invaluable work of teaching. The film is based on a book co-authored by Nínive Calegari, Daniel Moulthrop and Dave Eggers called Teachers Have it Easy: The Big Sacrifices and Small Salaries of America's Teachers. You can read a Washington Post review of the book here <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/23/AR2005062301562_pf.html> .

We are excited to invite first-hand stories/ footage filmed by students about their public school teachers and the struggles of being a teacher. In this spirit, we are looking for public school teachers to help get their students involved. We found your name in searching for teachers that have already done some work with film or digital storytelling in the classroom, and hope that you would be interested in becoming part of this new and exciting way of filmmaking.

To learn more about the project you can check out our website at <http://www.theteachersalaryproject.org/>. To get an idea of what we are looking for, visit our student information page <http://www.theteachersalaryproject.org/studentvideo.html>, where you and your students can get some ideas for what we're looking for and how to get involved in the project. If we are able to use your submission in the final film we will hold a premiere screening at your school!

If you think this is something that you might be interested in helping with, or if you could perhaps suggest others who you think might be interested, please let us know. I look forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,

Emily Davis
Production Assistant
The Teacher Salary Project 

FROM THEIR WEBSITE

CREATE A VIDEO DOCUMENTARY

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We want to include your story in our film!

The Teacher Salary Project is all about giving YOU the voice to share your own personal story and connect with others so we can help our nation’s strongest teachers become even better.

We are especially looking for video submissions from teachers who have had to take on second and third jobs to be able to keep up their "teaching habit". Bring the video camera to your other jobs, tell us about the other work you do and what keeps you teaching.

We are also looking for videos made by students - Click here for more student info. Tell us about a teacher who changed your life, or interview your teacher and submit the interview to us! (click here for some questions you might ask)

Here are three ways that you can contribute:

Option One:
Film yourself with you own camera and create a “video journal.”
Then give us a call at (415) 963-4344 and we'll tell you where to send it.

Don’t forget to print out and sign a release form (click here) and send it with your tapes.

Option Two:
Directly upload your videos for others to see. Go to the Teacher Salary Project’s YouTube Channel (here), watch one of our videos, and then join the conversation by clicking on the “post video response” link found under the “commentary” tab on each video’s webpage. Then subscribe to our YouTube channel so you’ll receive all of our new videos. For technical help with uploading your videos to YouTube, click here.

Option Three:
Call us at (415) 963-4344 and leave a message explaining your story or circumstance so that we can contact you directly.

Again, we want YOUR input and YOUR perspective, so be creative with your camera and tell us your story!