From the October 5, 2004, edition of The New Castle Record
Student publications at Craig County High School have consisted solely of the yearbook since the days of New Castle High, but that is about to change. Sometime near Thanksgiving-an exact date has not been penciled in- a student newspaper will be printed.
Will it be the Craig Beacon? The Rocket’s Red Glare? The CCHS Post? No one knows; the name has yet to be decided on, and when it is, it will be a guarded secret until the day it hits the halls of the school.
Then, and not a day before, everyone will know the moniker of the newest scoop sheet in the high school.
This year the school has a class which can make the paper a reality.
Former Principal Brian Green wanted a student newspaper at CCHS. He had some support. English teacher John Bolte thought the idea was good, and the school administration agreed. So, a class was formed at the high school which would handle the responsibility of publishing the paper. It is not, however, strictly a newspaper class.
Advanced Composition is the title. The course encompasses much more than news writing or production. Lately, the class has studied poetry. They write and read and have discussions about literature and the art of writing. It’s not a scene reminiscent of many newsrooms.
What it will look like as a deadline approaches remains to be seen. One of the goals of class members is to get a newspaper through production and into the hands of the students.
Bolte was assigned to teach the class. He said the class is not structured like a standard lecture-style English class.
“It’s more of workshop atmosphere,” Bolte said. “They’re creating the course themselves, and I’m writing down what happens.”
The students can read or work on the project at hand, or gather in a circle for discussion. One of the main topics of discussion is what the newspaper will look like and what the content of the paper will be. There are still several decisions to be made on those points.
There will only be five issues this year, meaning one per six weeks. That doesn’t seem like much, but it will take a lot of work to pull it off. The students are learning that.
And content itself poses problems – after six weeks, some of the news will be old news. What will be the news? Will it be a rehash of club meetings and trips? Will it explore issues facing the students? Will it be proactive?
Mostly, these answers will be provided by the students when they start writing stories for the newspaper.
Junior Josh Evans is one of the aspiring journalists (more of a columnist with an appreciation for the original thinkers of our past) who will be a key player in this project.
” It’s not going to be a miniature version of the yearbook,” he said. Taking nothing away from the yearbook, he does not want the newspaper to encapsulate an event and leave it at that. He wants the paper to report the news and explore the issues.
When the county’s director of tourism, Diane Lee, wanted a press release written about the festivals this month, she approached the Advanced Composition class and Evans wrote the piece. It appears on the front page of this issue.
He is also working on the PTSA calendar with class member Nicky Ledford.
The students of the class are united by a love of writing and a desire to become better writers. They evaluate each other and work together to not only hone their skills, but make the projects in the class a reality.
“The good part for the students is the class meets every day; the bad part is it’s only for 45 or so minutes of the day,” he said.
“I don’t get that much time to write other than here. I think it’s great,” he said.
But Evans said the time is precious. “It’s kind of hard to channel all of my creative abilities into 45 minutes of the day,” he said.
Another aspect of the class is it will never be the same twice, hence it can be repeated for credit. Advanced composition might be completely different-certainly the newspaper will have different content- next year, so students who want to sign on again can do so.
For the first year or so, while the paper is in its development stages, Bolte said the staff won’t be divided into different departments such as editorial, advertising, and circulation. He said he wanted all of his students to participate in each phase of the production of a newspaper.
Other projects planned in the Advanced Composition class include publishing a semi-annual literary magazine and recording folklore and oral histories of the region.
So far, Bolte and the students like the way the class and plans for the paper are going.
The proof will be in the finished product.
Prepared by Shelly Koon
From The New Castle Record archives
