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The Teal Chair: An Idaho Student Documentary

Posted at 10:13 PM, Apr 22, 2018
and last updated 2018-04-23 00:13:04-04

Death is about the last thing on the mind of high school seniors. Yet a small group of Eagle High School broadcasting students has been focused on the subject for months. They produced a thirty-minute documentary based on one question. If you had a limited time to live, what would you do?

Treasure Valley Hospice brought the idea to broadcasting teacher Andy Favor. The goal, to get people talking about living instead of dying. “I think people fight death so hard that they lose their vision of what's important," says Kim Ouwehand the Community Relations Director for Treasure Valley Hospice. She continues, “I didn't want it to be sad. I wanted it to be fresh and new."

The seventeen and eighteen-year-old students admit they had never really understood how hospice works or talked about dying before this project. 

“None of us have really thought about death. Just the concept, it's abstract. And it’s not something people like to think about,” says student Declan Tomlinson.

The kids learned when you ask people a question about how best to live, they open up and start sharing. They say the answers changed their entire perspective on life and death. “When you interview these people and hear their stories, and what's important when they are facing life and death decisions, you can't help but be touched by these people. And I think this experience touched all these kids," says broadcasting teacher Andy Favor. “I think the biggest take away from everybody is relationships with other people and not as much what you do in life, but who you are with," says Tomlinson.

The Teal Chair documentary debuts this Thursday night at the Jump building in downtown Boise. There are still a few tickets left. You can get them at treasurevalleyhospice.com.