Newspaper Club for Urban Students

Vital Stats

Nicole L

  • people helped400
  • People Doing It 50

The Problem

Before the inception of our student newspaper, our students had alot to say but no forum to express themselves. Our new student newspaper enables our students to voice their opinions, develop their writing and objective reporting skills, as well as read what other students are thinking and doing in and out of school. At our young school, it is important that we sustain the sense of community we have worked so hard to cultivate as the school expands. Publishing an actual, tangible print newspaper gives the newspaper club participants something concrete to celebrate. As the entire school receives a free copy, writers feel a sense of pride and come to understand the power of the written word.

Plan of Action

As we already have a few very successful editions of the newspaper created at the end of last year, we already have a precedent for the newspapers we will create this year. This year nearly fifty new students (triple what we had last year) have signed up to participate and we need the finances to support all of their work and sustain their enthusiasm. We have ties to a school newspaper publishing company in Alabama that cheaply prints and ships our newspapers to the school. Another teacher who is a former magazine editor performs the final edit of each edition to ensure student work is grammatically flawless. We would want to produce club t-shirts to establish our legitimacy as a school club and advertise what we do. We would also recruit other volunteers to help students revise their own work, as revision is the most important and difficult step for our students. The excited buzz as newspapers are distributed at the end of the school day is certainly testament to the success of our club at PS 609.
Go
Education

Related Stuff