In Mr. Fry’s journalism class, the students are always busy. They are in charge of creating the yearbook, and they also write feature story articles on things happening around the community. It is a good public resource and helps people understand what is going on in Potosi.
The journalism class is in charge of making the yearbook every year. This is something that is on the students and takes a lot of hard work. The first step in making the yearbook is going out and taking the pictures. Mr. Fry has three cameras in his room, which he lends to his students. His students take the camera and go around the school and community to snap pictures of sports events, club activities, plays, and the musical for the yearbook. After that, they transfer the pictures to a website called Yearbook Avenue, where they edit and put the pictures onto page spreads, which is the term for yearbook pages.
By having the class do the yearbook, it lets the students customize it to their liking. They get to pick the theme, edit the design elements for different types of pages, design the pages, and put the pictures they want in there. Journalism teacher Mr. Fry also does extensive work on the yearbook behind the scenes. He offers feedback and ideas to the students. Senior Ryan Stoney said this: “Mr. Fry does a lot of work for the yearbook; he gives us feedback and great ideas for us to go off of. He also gives you the freedom to choose what you want.”
Mr. Fry also helps the students write feature stories for the public, like the one I am writing now. He acts as an editor, giving suggestions and ideas that the students may use. Mr. Fry also gives the students feature story mentor texts. This allows the students to read feature stories to learn style to improve their own feature stories. The students read stories that professional journalists write. They then study that writing and put elements from it into their own.
These feature stories are important because they inform the community about what is going on in Potosi High School. We cover both in-school and community events. This is important because Potosi does not have a newspaper, so by writing these stories, we give the community insight into what is happening around the area.