Several 8th graders at West Clermont Middle School had the unique opportunity to write and become published authors through an online platform.
This was part of an initiative partnership between the National Writing Project and the National Council of English Teachers. Right now West Clermont Middle School is the only school in Ohio involved in this initiative.
"Our Towns, Our Stories" is a platform where students write with real purpose for real audiences. It encourages them to share the positive stories that define their communities while also giving voice to the challenges their communities face.
Language Arts teachers Mary Hufford and Stacy Smith are leading the project for the Middle School. They say this style of writing focuses more on journalistic and feature writing styles instead of essay writing.
“It’s completely different. It’s still informative, but the audience is different. They’re not trying to pass a test, they’re trying to inform or entertain,” said Hufford. “They’re having to think about who their audience is. They have to think about why they’re writing.”
Before becoming a teacher, Hufford was a former newspaper editor. She’s looking at this project as a new challenge for her students. She explains this isn’t just about writing but also learning new skills.
“Depending on the topic of their story. Some of them are interviewing peers. Some of them are interviewing staff members or community members. We've got a bunch of kids who reached out to their churches, and they're interviewing their youth leaders there. One of the students is profiling a teacher who's retiring after decades in the district,” said Hufford.
Tinley Nix is an eighth grader in the class. She wrote an article about the arts and explains what she’s learned.
“That it has to be interesting and intriguing for a person who maybe doesn’t know about the topic or needs to learn more about it,” said Nix. “People who might not currently be interested in the fine arts, but after they read it they will want to join and be more intrigued by singing or playing an instrument.”
Stacy Smith says students also learned about collaboration.
“The students collaborated well when we mixed classes from two different teams. They tried to focus on things outside our Amelia community at first. Once the brainstorming got going, they exceeded our expectations,” said Smith. “Knowing that their work would be published for other kids around the country to read was definitely motivation.”
So far there are 47 stories published on the website from WCMS and topics range from highlighting local staples like Jungle Jim’s and the Eastgate Mall to taking a look back at the history of the district to looking into community issues.
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