Eighth-grade students win suicide prevention video contest
Whitefish Middle School’s Jackie Fuller stands with eighth graders Jane Trina and Maile Vine, who won the Nate Chute Foundation Suicide Prevention Video Spot contest. (Daniel McKay/Whitefish Pilot)
Two Whitefish Middle School students will get to see their creativity come alive on television.
Maile Vine and Jane Trina, both eighth-grade students, recently won the Nate Chute Foundation Suicide Prevention Video Spot contest with their 30-second public service announcement video.
In addition to the $1,500 the two won for the project, their advertisement will also air on ABC Fox Montana and during Jimmy Kimmel Live.
WMS Assistant Principal Jackie Fuller introduced Vine and Trina to the Whitefish School Board during the May 15 meeting. Their original video and the version edited for TV were shown during the meeting.
In the video, the two students speak over images of healthy and wilting flowers, silhouetted figures in the sunset and various students and staff showing support for those dealing with mental health issues.
“This flower has been treated with consideration. This flower has been neglected,” the narration reads. “Put in the extra effort to ask, ‘Are you OK?’ You can make the difference and save a life.”
Fuller said the two students shot the ad on their iPhones and edited it in iMovie. Information for the ad came with the help of Mrs. Lisa Pollard, Health Enhancement teacher at the school.
“We drew inspiration from having people care about you and how having one person even can change somebody’s life. So we decided that would be a really great place to start for our video and we were really inspired by that,” Vine said. “People who have mental issues should not be something that we’re looking down upon, they should be something that we can help raise up, help fix that and help with this issue.”
Trina said unfortunately, the stigmatization of mental health issues is something they’ve even seen at school.
“We felt really strongly about that because there are kids at our school that will shame mental health [issues], so we wanted to raise awareness,” she said.
The board members thanked the students for their work and said they’re setting strong examples as Whitefish students.
“I just want to say, I’m so proud of you guys,” Trustee Katie Clarke said. “I feel like you have embodied all of our strategic goals. You mastered the content, you thought critically, you solved a complex problem and you did it all on your own. I just think that you exemplified what we’re trying to build.”
The original video can be viewed at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oiFjKgaAPZPSX4cFGTKNvwKP8lvDnS-2/view