Publishing Our Literary And Arts Magazine

Each year for past 5 years, the students at our rural high school have produced a literary and arts magazine, under the direction of a committee from our journalism class. The students, from grades 10-12, handle all aspects of the project, from making presentations in our English and art classes, to setting editorial standards, to page design and production, to running off the pages and binding each copy. We distribute copies at school, make them available to the audience at graduation, and put them in our county library branches. Our ambition this year is to increase our press run from our traditional 200 copies per year and to print some of the photos and art work in color. These are long-held goals which we have not had the resources to accomplish. Although our budget is even smaller this year, we are determined not to wait any longer to move to this next step. We want to produce a copy for every household at school (we have 500 students) and to have enough to stock the local coffeehouses and other community hangouts. To expand and improve, we need help with printing and binding supplies. We are asking for the copy paper, ink cartridges, and binding combs that will allow us to create more copies of a more colorful and representative magazine this year. For my journalism students who do the actual production, the magazine is a wonderful exercise in teamwork, accountability, and creativity. All the questions editors must consider--quality standards vs. inclusiveness, freedom of expression vs. the risk of offense--must be answered in the fishbowl of a small community school. For the wider community, our magazine provides an anthology of the creativity and diversity of our students. We are a largely poor, rural community with a diverse population. We have printed work in English, Spanish, and Russian, in forms from comics to rap to Shakespearean sonnets, dealing with topics as predictable as prom dates and as challenging as families facing deportation. Allowing students to speak from the heart and reach an audience outside their own friends and family is a way to increase the power of their voices. Not many of my students' parents have attended college, and approximately half have not completed high school, so many of these teens need to look elsewhere for that expectation that they have the potential to continue their education. Every time they receive proof that people from the wider world believe in them, they gain the courage to take another step toward that goal. Without assistance this year, we will need to cut back our magazine, when we have the interest and the talent to make it bigger and better. I am so hoping that donors will place their votes of confidence in our students by helping us with printing supplies.