Starting next school year a new course will be available to students. Journalism, which is also known as the school newspaper “The Prowler”, will be combining classes with the yearbook class. Together they will form a new class “Print Media I” and “Honors Print Media II”. 

     “The number of students that enroll in journalism as well as the yearbook hasn’t really been growing… We [combined the two classes] to increase our numbers but also we cover a lot of the same content so it would enable us to knock two birds with one stone and then at the same time cover our numbers,” said Nathan Trimmer, English I teacher and Journalism advisor. 

     Students will cover the basics of journalism and aspects of creating the yearbook and put together both publications. The class is Project-Based and Work-Based. Print Media I is a regular elective so it is only a semester long, but Honors Print Media II is a hybrid (wrap) class, a year long course meeting every other day. 

     “Print Media I is all about about foundations so we need to teach you how to write and write in the style that journalism requires,” said Trimmer. “Whereas Honors Print Media II is an all year course because those students are our consistency from the beginning to the end. They have been through all of the Print Media I material and now they are into the full on designing to make more of on decisions of the style and layout. That’s much more of a leadership roll than just a normal classroom.” 

     In order to be admitted into Print Media I, students need to have either an english teacher recommendation or have received an 80% or higher in English I. In order to be admitted into Honors Print Media II students must have received an 80% or higher in Print Media I or approval from the course instructor. Ninth graders are not able to take this course. 

     “We need to make sure that the writing and the ability of writing is at a high enough level where we are not getting students who are still unsure of basic conventions and basic organization,,” said Trimmer. 

     In Print Media I students will learn the process of publishing a school yearbook and a student newspaper. In the class, students will be introduced to page layout, photography and story and captain writing. 

     Trimmer explained that students taking Print Media I will also contribute to the paper and the yearbook whether they take that class in the fall or the spring. If they take it in the fall they will still contribute to the yearbook even though that is not published until the end of the school year. 

     In Honors Print Media II, students will have major responsibilities in the actual production of both student publications. In this course students will also engage in regional and state-level competitions and receive critical feedback from professionals. 

     “I’m certainly nervous to have to learn an entirely different topic, especially since it’s my senior year. However, I am interested in exploring a different form of journalism,” said editor-in-chief of the yearbook, Claire Tison.