Early Early Show Club Spotlight

You may have seen a group of students huddled in front of the school early on a Tuesday morning and wondered what was going on. Perhaps you bravely ventured into the commotion and found yourself a bit embarrassed when you could not name the capital of Minnesota, only to realize that the whole school will soon know about your lack of geographical knowledge. Regardless of whether or not you have encountered the group yourself, you have probably heard of The Early Early Show.

The Early Early Show is School Without Walls’ version of a late night show, and is produced by members of the Film Team. Every Tuesday morning, the crew tapes an episode at school on various topics, from trivia challenges to holiday traditions.

Junior Ellie Sanders is an executive director, producer, editor in chief, and social media manager for The Early Early Show. The team is not huge, and so she explains that she “does a lot for the show.” She notes that “Amaia [Noursi] basically does the same thing.” The size of the team means that each member takes on significant responsibility to deliver a high quality video each week.

Sanders describes the show as “a feel good morning show for the School Without Walls community.” The show covers a variety of topics, and has a couple of different formats.

Sanders explains that the most common structure is seen in the “videos that we film every week that are short, usually just questions or relevant topics.” These videos include trivia, word association, and other challenges; you may have seen their filming on Tuesday mornings.

Sanders continues, “Then we have longer ones, like our ‘are you smarter than a freshman’ episode. We also do burning questions, which is where we interview teachers with questions that students have for them. There are a lot of diverse topics.” This type of episode takes more effort and coordination, but they have been well received. The recently released episode, “Couples or Friends”, has nearly 500 views on Instagram and is one of the show’s most entertaining projects.

The team encourages everyone at Walls to participate. Director Amaia Noursi explains that “participating in the show is a fun (maybe sometimes embarrassing) experience, even just answering a short question.”

The show is open for all students (and faculty!) Noursi explains that, “We [the crew] consciously try to incorporate people from all grade levels and not just people we know. I believe we give everyone a chance and opportunity to participate and interact with other grades,” citing the episode “Are You Smarter Than a Freshman” where every grade level was represented.

The show is a highlight of many students’ Tuesday mornings; it will be exciting to see what they produce in 2022!