Five years ago this month, the United States shut down. With the COVID-19 pandemic taking hold worldwide and hospitals overwhelmed with victims of the new and highly contagious virus, there was little choice but to go to extremes to limit exposure. For college-bound kids at Antioch’s Deer Valley High School, it meant no sports, no prom and distanced learning.
For college counselor Cameron “Mr. Cam” Schmidt-Temple, the challenge became keeping students motivated as so many struggled to remain engaged when a lonely video feed took the place of lively classrooms and hallways.
How Schmidt-Temple kept his young charges of Deer Valley’s class of 2021 on the path toward college is the subject of “The Class,” a six-part series from KQED Presents debuting on PBS stations Tuesday, March 18. Bay Area native Daveed Diggs is among the show’s executive producers, the “Hamilton” star’s song “Night Time” serving as its theme. The series is the brainchild of husband-and-wife filmmaking team, Adam and Jaye Fenderson, the latest of their documentaries to focus on education.
“‘The Class’ is kind of this culmination of this work that we’ve done over the years,” Napa native Adam Fenderson said. “We really feel like this is the story that we’ve wanted to tell. The importance of supporting students comes through in this along with the intimate stories of these students’ lives over the course of their senior year in high school.”…