As part of the fifth-grade journalism unit at McAlister Intermediate School over the past three years, representatives from The Suffield Observer have been invited to speak to the students about what it takes to put together a monthly paper and how getting something written might actually happen.
This year, on a beautiful October day, the fifth-grade students were gathered on the tennis courts behind the school to allow for social distancing and a speaker system was set up. Andy Sauer, one of the Observer columnists, spoke about where he gets his ideas and explained his process for getting words to paper (or computer). As editor of the paper, I spoke about the nuts and bolts of how the paper gets from article ideas to print.
The students had lots of questions, and we encouraged the kids to think about writing something for publication in the paper. We are happy to see several submissions from this group in this issue. There are quite a few budding writers out there! Thanks, too, to Krystal Holmes for setting up the visit.
The classes sent some very nice thank you notes. (It’s nice that that tradition is still around.) One of the students wrote, “Thank you for spending countless hours writing stories about our beautiful town of Suffield and not even getting paid.”
You’re welcome.