We make the memories!
My Middle School Publications class is made up of 28 7th and 8th graders, including at least one special education student. In addition to producing our school's Yearbook, they make a Literary Magazine for our Media Center, a Welcome Brochure for incoming 6th graders, greeting cards for our Celebrity Students Program, and the 8th graders make picture storybooks for a 1st grade classroom in our district. Every Friday they write to a prompt, and then these writings are revised and edited for national writing contests. Every year the class averages 67% of them being published in national books of poetry and essays. Two of the last three years, one of the 8th graders has won the county-wide writing contest, beating out high school writers!
In addition to this class, I also teach 6th grade Social Studies.
We are not a line-item budget! We sell no ads and have to pay for the Yearbook entirely with its sales. We are in an economically depressed area of an economically depressed state and our families cannot afford extra costs. We keep the price of the Yearbook under $25, and that barely pays for the printing and shipping costs. We have no extra money to buy new cameras when old ones break. Many of my students have cameras of their own, but several are unable to purchase one. I want them to have the opportunity to borrow one of the class cameras to complete their assignment for the Yearbook, and right now we're down to one camera.
The class NEEDS two new digital cameras! One of the two we have has a broken digital screen, and the students can't see the pictures they've taken until they're uploaded, and then they find out they've jiggled or the picture is blurry. The moment they were trying to capture is gone! They get so frustrated!
You can make the difference in a child's future by giving them a tool they can use and a talent they can develop. Many previous students have gone on to work on the Yearbook in High School and become accomplished photographers. Please help that happen again!
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