YOUNG VOICES 2017, SIGNING OFF
by Mr. Tressel, Master Teacher
It was with some trepidation that I signed on to teach the Journalism & Publishing class this summer. I have enjoyed teaching Creative Writing for the past thirteen years and adding another course to my load, especially with the added pressure of creating the yearbook and the newspaper was daunting. And when I saw how small my class list was on the first day, I was worried that I would not be able to accomplish all the course's stated objectives with only a handful of kids.
I have never been so happy to be so wrong.
We had Martin from Boston Wise for a week and a half, and Anna Hoksbergen from the Netherlands for three weeks, but the three students who have been here since Day 1 have achieved near miraculous things these past six weeks.
Shaeleigh Madan is a member of PCC's inaugural class of rising eighth graders, but her boundless enthusiasm for PCC, and her ability to vividly, yet succinctly, distill six weeks of a class down to a tight paragraph proved indispensable for the yearbook where space restrictions were still an issue.
Luckily, our decision to publish on the Web meant that space was no longer a consideration, which meant that we were able to publish Jenna Carson's (almost) Weekly Rants in full--her pithy yet always wildly entertaining takes on crying at PCC and time travel paradoxes added a new perspective to our time here at PCC. And her skills as a photographer graced both articles on this website and in key spots in our yearbook--including the beautiful image that appears on its opening page.
And Ciera Lonergan, PCC's own Lois Lane. Watching her interview students and proctors and Master Teachers with her trusty pocket notebook was a real delight. And her ability to craft well-written articles about dances and core courses and even long-time feuds between me and my former proctor was amazing to watch, since she did it daily in front of us, filling up notebook page after notebook page with her handwritten dispatches. A day where she would pump out three or four articles in a single class were not uncommon. That's probably more than most Journalism students in years past wrote in a whole summer.
I am going to miss my intrepid band of student journalists, but I will always be immensely proud of the amount of work they put in to make sure that PCC Summer 2017 lives on forever here on PCC Young Voices, and I hope their efforts will serve as a model and inspiration for future Journalism classes. They have set an enormously high bar.
It was with some trepidation that I signed on to teach the Journalism & Publishing class this summer. I have enjoyed teaching Creative Writing for the past thirteen years and adding another course to my load, especially with the added pressure of creating the yearbook and the newspaper was daunting. And when I saw how small my class list was on the first day, I was worried that I would not be able to accomplish all the course's stated objectives with only a handful of kids.
I have never been so happy to be so wrong.
We had Martin from Boston Wise for a week and a half, and Anna Hoksbergen from the Netherlands for three weeks, but the three students who have been here since Day 1 have achieved near miraculous things these past six weeks.
Shaeleigh Madan is a member of PCC's inaugural class of rising eighth graders, but her boundless enthusiasm for PCC, and her ability to vividly, yet succinctly, distill six weeks of a class down to a tight paragraph proved indispensable for the yearbook where space restrictions were still an issue.
Luckily, our decision to publish on the Web meant that space was no longer a consideration, which meant that we were able to publish Jenna Carson's (almost) Weekly Rants in full--her pithy yet always wildly entertaining takes on crying at PCC and time travel paradoxes added a new perspective to our time here at PCC. And her skills as a photographer graced both articles on this website and in key spots in our yearbook--including the beautiful image that appears on its opening page.
And Ciera Lonergan, PCC's own Lois Lane. Watching her interview students and proctors and Master Teachers with her trusty pocket notebook was a real delight. And her ability to craft well-written articles about dances and core courses and even long-time feuds between me and my former proctor was amazing to watch, since she did it daily in front of us, filling up notebook page after notebook page with her handwritten dispatches. A day where she would pump out three or four articles in a single class were not uncommon. That's probably more than most Journalism students in years past wrote in a whole summer.
I am going to miss my intrepid band of student journalists, but I will always be immensely proud of the amount of work they put in to make sure that PCC Summer 2017 lives on forever here on PCC Young Voices, and I hope their efforts will serve as a model and inspiration for future Journalism classes. They have set an enormously high bar.
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