Mike Wolanin | The Republic Parkside students Madison McCarver, left, and Tora Vreeland work on a story during a journalism lab for Parkside journalism students at Parkside Elementary School in Columbus, Ind., Wednesday, March 29, 2023. The lab was run by journalism students from Columbus North High School.
Elementary students recently collaborated with high school journalists in reporting the news.
Students from Columbus North High School visited Parkside Elementary in late March to help fifth and sixth graders learn about journalism and prepare projects that will be shared as part of the school’s Writing Night and Writing Day in May.
During “The Mini Media Project,” fifth graders focused on the broadcast side of journalism and sixth graders focused on writing, said Rachel McCarver, student media adviser at North. Both grades also learned about the basics of journalism, such as press law, First Amendment rights, ethics and how to conduct interviews.
“I’m hopeful that this provides an inside look of journalism, because they don’t really get any experience with that until they’re in high school,” said McCarver. “And so I’m hoping that they’re seeing this now and thinking, when they do come to high school, they’re like, ‘Hey, this is something I was excited about when I was in elementary, and it’s pretty neat.’”
“It’s very fun when you notice something that you never heard about,” said sixth grader Carmen Sawyer.
Krishna Seethanaboina, also in the sixth grade, said the experience made him interested in taking journalism classes in high school, especially as he saw that there are different aspects of the profession.
“At first, I wasn’t really interested in journalism, but after this session it probably got a little more interesting,” said classmate Advait Wadke.
Another student, Miles Broaddus, said that while he doesn’t plan to pursue journalism, he’s proud of the work he came up with during the project and grateful to the high school students for their help.
“It’s just brought my writing into a new world,” he said.
Several of the North students who helped with the project are part of The Triangle, which is the high school’s news magazine. According to McCarver, students from the school’s yearbook and a C4 broadcast class were also involved, as well as at least one photojournalism student.
Jasmine Yang, a junior at North, said that she’s glad to be sharing about the opportunities that are out there.
“When I was in sixth grade, I really wasn’t sure that anything like this existed at North,” she said. “And so I just hope that since they’re being exposed to it, kind of, and being able to learn at a younger age, that it makes them more interested and inclined to pursue it in high school.”
Alex Osburn, also a junior, said that she hopes their visit gave younger students a behind-the-scenes look at journalism.
“For most of them, sure, they see people on the news, and they read the newspaper,” she said. “They see their parents read the newspaper. But they don’t know a lot of the work that actually goes into creating those media for the public. So I hope they get a little more perspective of that.”
Liz Stroh, a STEM teacher and part of Parkside’s writing committee, said that she’s “really impressed” with younger students’ maturity as they continue to work on their projects.
“I’ve been interviewed twice now, by different groups, and the level of preparedness in their questions is exceptional,” she said. “You can really tell that they learned a lot during the journalism camp.”
The origins of the camp date back to about a year and a half ago, when Parkside formed a writing committee, said Stroh. Their goals included increasing participation in writing, making a unified curriculum for the subject and increasing awareness about writing.
Stroh, who is originally from Fort Wayne, said she was inspired by the area’s annual Young Authors’ Conference, which is organized by the Indiana State Literacy Association.
“My vision was to create something like that for Parkside, where every single child was writing and our school focus for that day was solely on writing,” she said.
The committee ran with the idea and created Writing Night and Writing Day. They invited authors, reporters and illustrators to speak to students during the day. During the nighttime event, families were able to come and listen to students read their work out loud. There were also workshops with authors and different stations.
In planning for this year’s events, Stroh suggested the idea of partnering with North on a “mini journalism camp.”
“Liz Stroh had worked with us before with Writing Night,” said McCarver. “And this year, she said, ‘I have a crazy idea, how about we do this collaboration?’ And then, when my students got involved, it just started rolling.”
Osburn said that the media team at North wanted to build on what they’d done the year before and show younger students that journalism is a career pathway they might want to consider.
During this year’s Writing Night on May 4, Parkside students will once again be able to share their writing with family members. Stroh said that since there was more interest in this than what was first expected, organizers will also record students and have “viewing rooms” where people can watch these videos.
“The halls, all of the bulletin boards will be filled with student work,” she said. “So every child has something of theirs posted for their families to see, something that they can be proud of. And then the work from today is actually going to be featured as well. So the news broadcast that the kids created with the journalism students, we’ll have that playing. And then we’ll also have copies of the printed articles the kids wrote.”
The night will also feature food vendors, interactive stations, and a bounce house provided by the parent-teacher organization. The Bartholomew County Public Library will also have some staff members present to help students sign up for library cards and pick out books from the Book Express service.
For Writing Day on May 5, Parkside has scheduled a number of speakers, including musician and author Lucky Diaz. Students will also hear from individuals who work in broadcast news, TV production, illustration and photojournalism. Some guests will speak to students over Zoom, and some will attend in person.
Teachers also hope that, as part of Writing Day, fifth and sixth graders will be able to impart some of what they learned about journalism to third and fourth graders.
However, Stroh added that Writing Night and Writing Day focus on all forms of writing, not just journalism.
“We want to show kids that writing is not just writing books or writing for the newspaper,” she said. “…There are a lots of ways that you can participate in the writing process.”
