Page 12A
my
P01.V52.I4
black
cyan
magenta
yellow
f
T H I S
SUMMER 2013
ancy
Adviser Update
S T R U C K
Giving students a voice
I
t was a year ago that
Marguerite Sheffer, my AP
English language teacher,
asked me for suggestions
for the name of the school
newspaper she wanted to start
up. I honestly thought it was
funny. How would Ms. Sheffer
manage to teach me, a kid who
has no journalistic skills at all,
how to write a whole newspaper
article? But with the help of her
adviser, Beatrice Motamedi,
Ms. Sheffer started drilling us
on newspaper writing. After
a week, we began publishing
almost every day at CastleCrier.
tumblr.com. We also started
putting together longer stories
for the newspaper. And we
felt ourselves changing — we
weren’t just a normal AP class
anymore; we were the staff of
Ye Castle Crier, running around
the school, fact checking and
getting interviews. Our biggest
achievement came when we
published for the first time
in December 2012. It was a
beautiful moment. We published
again in April and won ninth
place for Best in Show at the
NSPA/JEA national high school
journalism convention. A new
newspaper placed in the top
10. Journalism has opened up
a whole new world and style
of writing for me. Through
journalism, our class has
managed to give our school and
its students a voice, something
we didn’t have or exercise
before.
MATTERS
Continued from page 11A
April or when we are battling
the intricacies of taking the
high school paper online.
But what we do makes a
difference not only in our lives,
Jazmin Stenson
Staff wriiter
Ye Castle Crier
Castlemont HS
Marguerite Sheffer,adviser
Beatrice Motamedii, mentor
[email protected]
Note: Jazmin’s December article, “Art with
Heart: Teachers with Tattoos,” won 3rd place
for Feature Writing in the California Press
Women’s 2013 High School Communications
Contest on May 13.
but also in the lives of people
in our school and community
and beyond.
What we did spread
awareness to classmates
that a former friend was
hurting. It helped stop the
spread of unchecked rumor
and innuendo by presenting
the hard facts of the story.
And it allowed others with no
connection to the Reynolds
community to get a personal
glimpse into the life of a funloving young woman sitting
on a table in the library with
an upside-down book in her
hands.
It was a relief to move on to
lighter fare a few days later:
deciding what size to make
the Valentine’s Day personal
ad hearts in our upcoming
February print edition. That’s
a new idea for us this year.
We hope it will make us a little
money. We hope the student
body will get behind the idea
and have fun with it.
We hope, in this little and
innocent way, we can make
a difference in a few more
lives. Don’t wait for a tragedy
at your school to realize just
how much your publication
matters.