All high schools in Seminole County compete to win the “Key to character” video awards. Each school is to make a video that showcases and fixes the issues that deal problems and shows the character in students. Every year video production makes a video to enter in the character key video contest. Winter Springs has competed in this competition twelve times and has won first place seven times.

The annual Character Key Video Contest incorporates the Keys and the most critical issues facing high school students as identified by the Seminole County Youth Commission (seminoleyouth.org). Based on two separate surveys (2009, 2010) of Seminole County high school students, the issues are drug and alcohol abuse, bullying, body image, conflict resolution, and depression.

The winning video premiers at the annual Leadership’s Community Leadership Celebration Luncheon in May. The students and their faculty advisers are introduced with 400 people in attendance.

Mrs. Dawn Wilkerson is the teacher who is in charge of the video for Winter Springs. Wilkerson’s students work on the video throughout the school year.

Wilkerson and students Cain Jordan, Zachary Barnhill, Siana Tricoles, and Kiera Perez all attended this event. Tricoles and Perez were the two actresses who starred in the video while Jordan and Barnhill edited and directed the video. Winter Springs left with the first place prize once again! The winners got $1000, trophies and certificates. There is also a banquet being held with about 400 people in attendance where the video will be shown and other prizes will be given to the winners.

The video “Better times” deals with depression, peer pressure, and suicide. The video is dark, dealing with realistic problems that teens and adults can face. The end of the video showcases the suicide hotline. This video can be found on the school’s YouTube channel.

Each high school has a team of students who produce the videos and star in it. The students can choose with Character keys to incorporate in their videos. The Keys are respect, honesty, courage, gratitude, generosity, caring, knowledge, fairness, patriotism, service, responsibility and courtesy. The Winter Springs team included the majority of these keys in their video.

The other schools that competed were Lake Mary, Lake Brantley, Lyman, Hagerty, and Oviedo.

Lake Brantley’s video got third place dealing with drugs and suicide. Lyman’s video got second and dealt with peer pressure about drugs and alcohol.  The second and third place winners got certificates and bags.

Winter Springs came home with the win once again and will be competing again next year.