We’ve been so impressed by the videos that our Champaign-Urbana area educators and teachers have been making to stay connected with their students (we’ve added a few since we originally posted this).
On Thursday a different kind of video – this time featuring local students, not the teachers – made it all the way to the national news: a socially distant performance of America The Beautiful.
NBC News aired the video, which features the Mahomet-Seymour Junior High bands, just hours after it posted on YouTube.
Band teacher Philip Meyer gave an assignment to his students: play “America the Beautiful” and record themselves. He then took all the student videos, synchronized them, and put them together in one online video concert mashup.
The original video has almost 3,000 views; it was posted to YouTube by Meyer and captioned with this: “Mahomet-Seymour Junior High Bands came together virtually during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic to perform America the Beautiful. Despite having to stay socially distant, music has a way to bring us all back together. Enjoy.”
Meyer’s video was picked up by NBC News. NBC News repackaged the video slightly and added it to its own YouTube channel.
Watch below:
Congrats to Meyer and all the kids and families involved in this project, which has delighted and cheered up viewers from coast to coast.