Editor’s note: the number of views of the puppet theme song video has been updated to reflect presstime information.
While English Diction might not sound like the most fun class to some, an OCU vocal coaching instructor used puppets to entertain his students while teaching.
Joe Fitzgerald, adjunct instructor of vocal coaching, turned his video lectures for his English diction class into a puppet show, going as far as to create a theme song for it as well.
Fitzgerald said that he was struggling with formatting this class for online because it is very question and conversation based, so he wasn’t sure how to do that without students there. He said his husband, OCU alumnus Jeremy Small, suggested the idea of using sock puppets as students.
“I dismissed the idea at first because I thought, ‘I work at a college, not on Sesame Street, no thank you,’ and then as the time went on and things started to look more serious, I decided he was right and we tried it,” Fitzgerald said. “Then we had the idea of writing a theme song, and we came up with some new words to fit in with the ‘VeggieTales’ theme song that both fit in with English diction and a pandemic.”
Sadie Koopman, music theater and vocal performance freshman, is one of the students from Fitzgerald’s English diction class, and said she really appreciated his fun twist on video lectures.
“Everyone is already pretty unmotivated by being at home, so it’s hard to want to open your laptop and play the video when you know it’s just going to be your professor staring you in the face telling everything,” Koopman said. “With Professor Fitzgerald’s videos, it has become something I look forward to doing, rather than something I dread doing all day.”
Luckily, Fitzgerald and his husband were quarantined with two friends who had backgrounds in music and had taken an English diction class before, so they were able to act as the sock puppets for the videos.
“Our friends we were quarantined with were the perfect candidates for being the sock puppet students because I didn’t need to rehearse it with them, I just talked to them like they were in the class,” Fitzgerald said.
Fitzgerald’s husband is also an amateur videographer. Fitzgerald said he wanted to take this opportunity to work on improving his video making skills, so that also played a role in the detail and effort of the videos.
“We set up in my apartment with multiple camera angles and my friends as the sock puppets on the floor, and then I just gave the lecture like I normally would, and he turned it into a magical experience, not unlike Sesame Street for adults,” Fitzgerald said.
Hunter Semrau, musical theater sophomore, is also one of the students in Fitzgerald’s English diction class, and really appreciated the effort and production value of the video.
“I was shocked and amazed at the effort and quality of the video. The production value was amazing, he had really good camera work, lots of cuts, multiple angles; even the lectures themselves, the teaching quality was really good,” Semrau said. “He works through all the lessons really well with the students, so I feel like even though it is funny and there’s the crazy puppet element to it, you are still getting so much out of it.”
Fitzgerald said he did this as a way of creating joy in a stressful and unpredictable time.
“I am trying to be the fun pandemic guy because it’s so much better than the despairing pandemic guy. I felt like it was kind of my duty as someone who had the time and the equipment, so I really wanted to keep the students engaged to the best of my ability,” Fitzgerald said. “It’s just a really hard time and we all have to be flexible, and I am glad that the videos that we made have been effective.”
When Koopman originally played the video, she played the audio out loud where multiple members of her family could hear, and she said they took a liking to it as well.
“So the funny thing is, I am at home with three other college-aged kids, and I was playing it out loud because I wasn’t expecting it, then by the end of the week my entire family was singing the theme song,” Koopman said.
Semrau said he really sees the effort and the passion that Fitzgerald has for not only teaching, but also for his students.
“Joe Fitzgerald is an amazing professor and he is hilarious and clearly cares a lot about his students and English diction,” Semrau said.
The theme song for the videos was posted on YouTube a week ago and has amassed over 1,200 views thus far. It can be watched here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6pNSXXeE3U.
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