haven't seen the show myself...article in the Kansas newspaper sheds a bit of light on the background and logistics of the show..
http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article193629069.html....Months before filming began in January 2017, producers met several times with Anderson, former Highland Park Principal Beryl New, school board members, parents and alumni to talk about the project.
Anderson was adamant that the filming not get in the way of the school?s primary mission: educating the kids. She wanted transparency, too. The school community knew from the get-go that there would be individuals at the school who were not actual students. But few people knew who they were until the end.
Henry wanted to make sure the show didn?t exploit the students.
Only those who agreed to appear in the series are shown, he said.?We didn?t want anyone to feel duped, but we also wanted to say: ?We?re going to do this together. We?ll just be in high school together,?? he said. ?We didn?t want to hide.?
The cameras, Anderson said, were a novelty for the first few days. But after a while, students just ignored them. Some of the students told her that crew members mentored them by giving them information about broadcasting and media work, a ?beautiful connection,? she called it.
At first, people thought the seven embedded students were actors. But one was a youth pastor from Nashville. One young woman from New Mexico had been a teenage mom. A brother and sister from Georgia moved to the United States through DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
The seven embeds moved into apartments and homes around Topeka. Some of them rode the bus to school, a couple of them lived close by and walked. One young woman got braces to look younger. The production crew worked out of an office in downtown Topeka.
?These seven folks willingly put their lives on hold,? Henry said. ?We took their cell phones and credit cards. And basically they ... cut themselves off from their lives.?
Social media and how high-schoolers use it quickly became an issue. One of the embedded students, a 22-year-old woman named Lina, heard that she had become the subject of sexual remarks in a group text soon after she arrived.
She told the principal, who found that some of the people involved weren?t even students in the district.
Participants, a few of whom graduated from high school just five years ago, were surprised by the constant cellphone use, and the pressures and stress that creates. There?s no real escape, one told Business Insider.
?One of the things that was sobering was the role of social media in these kids? lives,? Henry said. ?For me it is both a blessing and a curse on many levels.?
