What Student Publishing Does to the World

Touching Our hearts

Writing authority Donald Graves (1978) says, “In writing, kids find themselves,” and through their words, we discover both them and us. Calkins (1991) adds, “Sending writing out into the world is important for what it does to the writers. But it is equally important for what it does to the world” and for readers whether a mile or an ocean away.

Professor Takao Mimura at the Graduate School of Education in Joetsu University of Education (in Joetsu, Japan) recounted an experience of how his former high school students reacted to true stories in Treasures 3: Stories & Art by Students in Japan & Oregon:

The first thing I did with Treasures 3 was choose someworks from the book and introduce them to the students. This was because I wanted to know how they would react to them and to examine its effect on their creativity of expression. Incredible things happened in my class. A student who was translating a work, “Remembering My Mother,” was moved and became tearful. She couldn’t go on translating it into Japanese. The rest of the class sank into complete silence. It was my first experience seeing students moved so deeply by a work.

A normally-authorized textbook could not possibly bring about such a response because they do not contain personal writing and most are written by adults, and not young men or women of their age. I found students sympathized more easily with a work by someone of the same generation. The experiences were told vividly and from the bottom of the authors’ hearts.

The staff at Sunnyside School in Clackamas, Oregon told how a book of students’ writing and art touched their students. “Stories have been shared, read and reread, and laughed and cried over. Treasures: Stories & Art by Students in Oregon has given our students an awareness of life and the world around them as experienced by children of their own ages.”

Publishing Helps Us Understand, Come Together, Remember, and Heal

Communication Leads to Understanding

Writing about or reporting about tragic situations are difficult, necessary tasks for student writers and journalists. Often some of the students’ best work captures trying, painful times of their lives. High school journalists have covered student deaths, man-made and natural disasters, mass casualties, and teen suicides (Hall & Putney, 2000). In so doing, they hope that their stories will help the readers understand and help comfort them as they cope with the unimaginable.

Student writers, too often write about tragedies in their lives and submit such narratives for publication. Of student writing submissions for the Treasures anthologies, 25-30 percent of them focused on tragic events in the students’ lives. Along with personal loss, some students wrote about escaping from communist countries, leaving their families and homelands, living life on the streets as orphans, and surviving hardships under communist regimes. When their stories were published in one of the Treasures books, many readers became aware for the first time of such situations and better understood what our young people had gone through.

Thu Thuy Nguyen, a Vietnamese high school student who read her heart wrenching poem “When Time is Gone” at a public reading in Powell’s Bookstore in Portland, Oregon demonstrated strength and courage. Her voice trembled as she wiped away her tears, and the audience members wiped away theirs. They were moved by her and her words.

When Time is Gone
How I felt the day before I escaped on the boat from my country.

The evening ended the day,
That evening I can never forget.
All my family were sitting together.
We just looked at each other.
No one talked and laughed,
Just sad and quiet,
I could hear their breath
and their hearts beating.

That was the last day,
hour, minute, I had together
with my family.
They all gave advice to me.
I was ready to go in a few minutes.
They knew when I left
There would never be a day to be back.
But they had a plan for my future.
I didn’t know what it would be like going away
from my country, my family.
I thought when I left my country
it would be like I went to visit friends
and came back in a few days.
But I was wrong.
When time is gone
It can never come back.
(Treasures 3: Stories & Art by Students in Japan & Oregon, 1994,)

Chanrithy Him, author of the award-winning book titled When Broken Glass Floats says “that the initial publication of “When the Owl Cries” in Treasures 3: Stories & Art by Students in Japan & Oregon made me believe I could write.” Ms. Him continues explaining her motivation for writing her memoirs:

When I first came to the United States in 1981, I knew deep down inside that I needed to write my story. I wanted to educate the world about what I, as a child, my family, and thousands Cambodians endured during the Pol Pot era. I wanted to be worthy of my suffering which is to give Cambodian children who died a voice, as well as represent my murdered parents and deceased siblings. I felt obligated to record the crimes against humanity committed by the Khmer Rouge. I want readers to learn how the Khmer Rouge obtained power and what factors contributed to their rise in power: the support from China and the spill-over of the Vietnam War which led to the B-52 bombings of Cambodia. I don’t know if the average American will understand how the B-52 bombings
affected us. People who watched news of those bombings may have viewed them in an abstract way. When they read how I witnessed the events, they will see how one child was affected.

Below is an excerpt (on page 41) taken from chapter 3: “B-cinquante-deux [B 52s]” from When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge. During the Viet Cong incursion into Cambodia in 1969, followed by the U.S. and South Vietnamese troops into Cambodia with the hope to incapacitate the Viet Cong, Chanrithy’s home was destroyed. While staying at her great uncle’s home overlooking a river, she, at age 4, and her family witnessed a U.S. carpet bombing:Something drops down loudly. The house shakes. I open my eyes. It drops again and again as if a big fist were pounding on the ground. Ry runs out of the mosquito netting. I follow behind her. It’s dark. When Ry and I reach the hallway, Pa, Mak, Aunt Cheng, Than, Chea, and Ra are already
crowded by the front window.

“Putho [Mercy]!” Mak cries out, wincing with each strike.

I want to see what they’re looking at, and squeeze through them to reach the window. Gigantic tongues of fire and smoke lick the black sky, lighting up the landscape in the distance, somewhere on the other side of the Bassac River. Silhouettes of planes loop in the darkness with sequins of light pouring from them. The sequins dissipate in the brushy shadow of distant trees, then erupt in enormous explosions, bright fire on the earth. We see it before we hear it, the explosion arriving as a delayed echo. Each burst concludes with a huge mushroom of smoke.

“Pa?” I squeeze my father’s hand, looking up at the shadow of his face. He doesn’t say anything, but keeps on looking at the burning sky, trembling. I stand there with Pa watching it
after everyone else has gone back to their beds.

Never before have I seen men cry, so much, like Pa tonight.

Closer to Home: Reporting Natural Disasters

Hurricanes, floods, and other natural disasters take their toll on lives and damage in the U.S. Student journalists (in junior high and in high school newspapers) not only report on them but do so with positive outcomes. In the United After the Storm edition, junior high school editors Corder, Houston, Phan, and Ruyle wrote:

Producing the United After the Storm edition let us give backsomething solid to our injured city. In the issue, we wanted to show that although citizens were shaken by the tornado’s damage, they were more amazed by the sense of unity that it developed in the community. (Wilson & Spanogle, 2000) (5)

Nancy Story, teacher adviser at North Hall High School in Gainesville,
Georgia (2000) discusses how “the anniversary issue of The Forum—devoted entirely to the tornado and its aftermath—was effective in encouraging an emotional catharsis that their school needed:

Our focus for the commemorative issue was to highlight the ways our school had “risen from the ashes” while still pausing toremember the devastation—particularly the human devastation—that had resulted. . . . We wanted to demonstrate, then, the in-between: the character of our school, the impact of the tragedy on us and the love and the determination that has enabled us to carry on. . . .

The issue had given the staff, and hopefully, its readers, an opportunity to reflect on the experience—a chance to remember the sadness and to celebrate the healing and rebuilding that had taken place. (7)

Student journalists can give the reader their perspective on a natural disaster so that the reader is better able to know what it feels like being hit by a catastrophe. Christrina Meadows (2000), reporter at Highland West Junior High School in Mooreland, Oklahoma wrote an article to help her readers understand.

One reason I chose to write an article about such a horrible disaster was so people who didn’t get hit could understand the feeling of those who did. I wanted to help them understand our feelings of grief and loss and then be able to comprehend what we went through and helped us to cope.

In my case it was too difficult to grasp that I had lost everything. But, for me, my greatest loss was losing my memories—my memories of childhood and growing up. Those that showed me where my family came from. Now those memories are just in my heart. (9)

Covering School Violence, Bomb Threats, Teen Suicide . . . .

In the wake of the shootings at Columbine and Springfield, schools have been looking at ways to keep their students safe. At the same time, student newspapers have been providing students and staff with information, guidelines, and proactive pieces. Rockwood SouthRAMpage newspaper ran a story on violent messages and safety measures (e.g., elimination of backpacks and heavy coats worn in the classroom). Megan Henderson (2000) , co-editor of Rockwood South RAMpage wrote that “Our goal for producing this paper was to enlighten the students of Rockwood South on the causes and effects of school violence and what they can do to prevent an episode like the Columbine shooting from happening.”

Along those same lines were words written by Harry Proudfoot, adviser for The Villager newspaper of Westport High School in Westport, Massachusetts:

Our prime purpose was to force people to think about the unthinkable—to confront the full size and scope of the problem and realize that the potential for violence, as well as the potential for peace, lies within each of us. (23)

Other school newspapers tried to shed light on reasons for violence. Donofrio (2000) believed that her school newspaper should have focused more on families, values, ideas, and beliefs— “the things which truly make us who we are.”

We did not have enough time to write about morals and values declining in our society. We did not investigate the belief that if someone has no morals, beliefs or values, then do we prevent
them from having a gun or being outcast by forcing them to look like everyone else, or should we start at the heart of the problem by trying to teach and show them good morals and values? (28)

Many of the scholastic publications following shootings or violence attempt to help the healing process begin within their school and local communities. J.J. Babb, Editor in Chief of The Highlighter for Rocky Mountain High School in Fort Collins, Colorado describes how this took place as the staff put together a special edition following the shootings at nearby Columbine.

As the event unfolded on the radio and jury-rigged TV (a cable cord attached to one of the newspaper room’s computers), the Rocky Mountain High School Highlighter staff, the real student voice for the school, realized that we had to do something to recognize thetragedy and make way for the immense healing that needed to begin. To accomplish this, we decided to publish a special edition of the Highlighter. . . . The special edition we published helped to relieve some of the tension and put the students on common ground. Printing the special-edition newspaper on Columbine did not, however, bring to light the reasons behind the horror of the massacre. The paper did not explain what went on in the heads of the two teenage gunmen. And the paper did not make everything better for the students personally involved. But we hope the paper we as a staff created brought some peace to students at our school and a means through which true healing could begin. . . .

It was while reading the galley proofs of this publication, titled “Too Close to Home,” that I realized this: My newspaper students were crying—crying by putting all their disbelief, horror, sorrow, anger and youth into reporting and writing stories that grabbed and held readers to the very last period. . . .

And after they cried, they felt better, and the school felt better. Certainly not totally recovered—that may never happen—but a process of healing had begun. (33)

Murder, teen suicide, student deaths, and fatal accidents are also very difficult stories for students to cover. They try and be careful so not to overpublicize suicides fearing that more might be sparked. In murders, reporters give the victim’s perspective. In covering these stories, student journalists try not to complicate these tragic situations further nor offend any family members or friends. Many newspapers run accompanying columns (Wilson & Spanogle, 2000) to provide outlets for feelings—uniting people and starting the healing process.

Student Newspapers Cover National Calamities

High newspapers across the country responsibly covered the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centers in New York City on September 11, 2001. In the recent past, scholastic publications also reported other tragedies (e.g., shootings at Columbine and Springfield, Oklahoma City Bombing, natural disasters, and so on). In each case, student journalists strove to tell the many stories within stories so that their readers could better understand and cope with the events, as well as begin to carry on their lives and look towards the future. Below are a few of the kinds of articles about the September 11 attacks that were run in high school newspapers, which illustrate the depth of high school newspaper coverage.

• Ways and information for students to help them deal with loss, shock.

• Relief and cleanup efforts in New York City.

• The healing process of the nation.

• Where we go from here.

• Afghanistan women and how they are treated in their country.

• Should America go to war?

• Rebuilding the nation and moving forward.

• How air travel and security will change.

• Global effects of 9/11/01.

• Tragedy reminds us of what’s important: family and friends.

• A day to remember.

• Preventing further attacks.

• Terrorist attacks teaches important lessons.

• Muslim faith, culture, and religion.

Local School Newspaper Offers Student Perspective on Attacks

Student 9-11 issue carries “voice of youth” to 800,000
New York Times distributes Stuyvestant High School paper
4/1/2002
By Jim Martyka, Trends in High School Media, National Scholastic Press Association Online Edition

As the events of Sept. 11 shook the nation, the media coverage was almost overwhelming, understandably so. The tragedy affected everyone in some way and groups and individuals throughout the country and the world wanted to voice not only their perspective on the events but also their feelings and forecasts on how the world was changed.

However, one voice that at first appeared missing or at least overlooked on the national front was that of students close to the tragedy. New York City has a number of elementary and high schools near the former Twin Towers site and most schools were full that day. As in most things, the younger generation can sometimes offer a much different perspective on an event the size of the terrorist attacks and at least one school decided that voice needed to be heard.

And numbers show people were listening.

“This was a way for (students) to do something positive,” said Holly Epstein Ojalvo, advisor to The Spectator, the school newspaper at New York's Stuyvestant High School. “And (the response) has been amazing.”

Ojalvo’s referring to The Spectator’s special publication covering the events of Sept. 11 through the eyes of the students who were closest to the tragedy. What started as a high school special edition quickly became a much larger representation of how the events affected New York kids. The reason: paper and publication support from two major national companies and, most importantly, distribution support from the New York Times. Editors were so impressed with The Spectator’s special edition that they decided to include copies in their paper. That translated to a distribution of about 640,000. Not too shabby for a high school publication.

“The edition presented a unique opportunity to present to readers—youth voices as witnesses to the World Trade Center disaster,” said Toby Usnik, director of public relations for the Times’ Newspapers in Education program, which is designed to help educate students using the paper as a resource. The program supported The Spectator’s publication. “By affirming the importance of their own journalistic efforts at this extraordinary moment in history, and sharing those efforts with our general readership, we showcased the value and relevance of quality journalism to the lives of young people.”

The publication itself includes articles and personal stories on the events of that day, including the perspective of students who were given a sudden evacuation notice to just “run north.” It also includes a lot of creative writing, including poems reflecting students’ feeling on the attacks and life immediately afterward. But perhaps the most moving part of the publication are the personal photos, including a number by senior Ethan Moses that dramatically capture the falling of the towers and the chaos in the streets.

“There was nothing with the voice of youth,” said Jeff Orlowski, editor in chief of The Spectator, in a statement. “We wanted to reach a wider audience with our own words and images, in a way people could hold and keep.”

Officials said the process of putting together the 24-page glossy magazine was almost therapeutic for the students, some of whom witnessed some pretty scary stuff at the site. Editors and writers worked weekends and holidays to get the publication out. But they weren’t satisfied with stopping there.

Several staffers attended the Magazine Publishers of America convention with copies of the publication. It so impressed people there that companies quickly hopped on board to help with larger distribution. Besides the New York Times, Stora Enso North America donated paper and magazine publisher R.R. Donnelley picked up binding and shipping costs. Donnelley officials had extra empathy for the students (the publisher also had to evacuate offices on the day of the events). However, support was generated mainly because of the quality of the publication, officials said.

Since its release, readership has been overwhelming. The Spectator has released over 800,000 copies, with the possibility of more even so far after the event. Local and national Congress members have asked for copies as have other media groups. Reader response has been not only positive but also supportive.

“We’ve gotten letters and inquiries from all over the country, from alumni, from teachers, from people who appreciated our effort,” Ojalvo said. “It’s been amazing.”

Service Learning Student Publications Bringing Together Kids and Communities

Service learning projects that involve publication have tremendous impact on bridging the gap between the students and their local community (Edwards, 2001; Biggs, 2001; Ciotti, 2001; Ruggieri, 2001; Gilbert, 2001; Schnack, 2001). Sipe (2001) points put that students see the community members as collaborative partners with the understanding that we learn from and with one another (Schultz & Gere, 1998). Understanding and appreciation between young and old increases through the production process: researching, interviewing, drafting, editing and revising, and printing. The publications themselves become the topic of community conversations (Gilbert, 2001; Kissingford, 2002) that help fulfill a strong student need. Students of all backgrounds have the need to feel connected to their education, and this connection begins by bridging the gap between the school and the community in which students most identify themselves (Nieto, 1992; Ladson-Billings, 1994).

The knowledge that student learn from their elders can be powerful and moving. Gilbert (2001) whose students interviewed and wrote about community members who had served in the Vietnam War were “haunted by the stories being told and shocked that the storytellers had been their own age at the time of the war. . . . One student confessed that she hadn’t known her father fought in Vietnam until she mentioned her assignment; in tears, he explained how difficult the war had been for him and why he had never spoken about it.”

Many teachers who are in charge of student publications involve community members in their production process to make the publication more of a collaborative effort. Members of the community might participate in the making or teachers might have in mind the community as the publication’s audience. The Guilford Gazette, a town newspaper, serving 1,900 people in rural Guilford, Vermont has community volunteers and teachers who work with the middle school student staff. If There is a Place, edited by Stella Reed, is a collection of poems that came from workshops of The Whitney Project’s HIV/AIDS education and prevention program. The writing in Notes from the Field: Gailer Student Experiences in Community Service, edited by Paul Gustafson, focuses on high school students’ reflections on their community service work. A Little Light: Rural Teenagers Finding Hope, edited by John Kissingford, brought teenagers and senior citizens closer together through the community dialogue it inspired. Kissingford comments on how [the adults] were looking at their kids and their neighborhoods differently and starting different kinds of conversations.

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Bridging Generational Gaps

Students write about special people in their lives, such as parents and grandparents. Jason Gibbens made opening remarks to an audience at a public reading about his story entitled “Caught with Their Pants Down” that appeared in Treasures 3. It had been several years since he wrote it. Jason describes how writing can bridge generational gaps and bring people closer together with a greater appreciation and understanding for one another.

I originally wrote this story when I was in the sixth grade. As I recall, our teacher had assigned our literature class to write a story that we recognized as a family legend or myth. One immediately came to mind. Of all the stories that my grandfather and parents had told me over the years, this was the one that took on the most mythical proportions.

Although at the time, I didn’t really think much of it. Since then I’ve come to understand that it has more significance to me personally than just a funny story. My grandfather and I may be separated by more than seventy years and two generations but I think this story and others like it have helped to establish a common ground with which we can understand each other more and share our experiences.
Jason Gibbens, Eugene, Oregon

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