Highland Park’s sports teams scored some wins this season, but when it comes to hype videos, they’ve all been outplayed.
Highland Park High School’s teachers unveiled their own hype video at the school’s pep rally on Oct. 31. It has action, energy, and drama, and is packed with campus celebrities.
The video was received by students with screams and cheers.
What has teachers so excited? Their district’s top rating from the Texas Education Agency. Highland Park ISD earned a 96 out of 100 from the agency in 2025, outperforming every 5A/6A school district in the state for the first time since the A-F system was implemented in 2018.
“We’re state champions,” said MAPS and STEAM teacher Bridget Myers, part of the team that created the video. “We are school state champions.”
The video showcases some of the creativity and resourcefulness that propelled the district to the top of its class.
Science department chair Meredith Townsend first had the idea to make a teacher hype video during a pep rally.
She was watching a hype video for Highland Park’s volleyball team when the English teacher next to her remarked, “How cool would it be if teachers did this?”
“Oh, we can,” Townsend responded.
She turned to A/V production and media teacher Brandon Jackson for technical expertise, then joined forces with Myers and Emily Barnes, an English teacher and cheerleading director, to make her idea a reality.
With direction from Jackson, high school senior Ryan Moore filmed the video in two days in a science classroom and the school’s basement recording studio.
Draper Media, which produces hype videos for many HP athletic teams, lent the teachers its lights. Jackson bought some spray fog. The Highland Belles drill team, Highlander Band, and cheerleaders contributed spirit items, and most of the approximately 70 teachers, administrators, staff, and crossing guards who participated brought their own props.
Travis Snowden, who coaches basketball and teaches at the middle school, showed up to film with his motorcycle helmet, gloves, and jacket.
Townsend donned the bear costume she wears once a year to celebrate Alaska’s Fat Bear Week.
Counselor Charlie Trahan put on a borrowed kilt and took out the sword he keeps in his office.
And Geoffrey Orsak, executive director of the Moody Innovation Institute, managed to get a bike down the stairs and rode it through the video while wearing a top hat.
Jackson added one special effect — footage of dirt being blown. The video’s other effects are of the low-tech variety.
To create the illusion that a pile of books was being lifted from above, campus instructional technologist Amy Brown pushed them up from below. And footage of Brown smashing a printer with a baseball bat is real. There are still pieces of the dinosaur-age machine, which no longer worked, in the recording studio.
Jackson expected the editing process to take weeks but was able to squeeze it into a single weekend. He chose to include music from ’90s horror flick The Faculty, in which teachers are controlled by evil aliens.
When the video premiered to students, Townsend thought, “please don’t boo us.” The crowd’s response to their top-secret project was exactly the opposite.
“The reaction was fantastic,” Barnes said. “I had chills. All the kids were screaming and laughing.”
Even the video’s creators were impressed by what they managed to achieve.
“Don’t underestimate what some teachers with limited resources can figure out,” Townsend said. “That’s the cool part about this job. We’re always able to make do with what we have.”