SUMMERSIDE, P.E.I. — A new club has allowed a group of young writers to try their hands at reporting.
The Journalism Club at Summerside Intermediate School formed so students could report on the Diversity Festival events scheduled over five weeks in January and February at the Summerside school.
Student writers volunteered to cover various festival activities planned for each week.
The budding scribes produced articles for the school’s social media pages.
Student Samantha Coughlin loves to write and enjoyed getting to report on a topic she was interested in at the LGBTQ+ presentations.
“It’s something new that I wanted to try,” she said about reporting.
May Arsenault was the one who convinced her to try it out.
“I thought it would be fun,” said May. “I have an immense passion for writing and photography and anything that will require imagination and artistic abilities.”
Both girls enjoy writing novels, and found reporting was a little different.
“A lot of it (novels) could be based off my imagination. Whereas in here, I would have to pay more attention to the details and every word someone was saying. If I want to quote them, I have to think ‘oh, hey that’s a good quote,’ then I would have to remember it or actually write it down,” said May.
Student Molly MacInnis said it was an awesome experience.
“We had to immerse ourselves more in what was going on,” said Molly. “I really enjoyed the participation aspect of it. I’m not really someone who would go and participate in everything. It forced me to go a little bit outside my comfort zone to talk to people and have new experiences.”
Paige Walfield’s favourite part was the writing.
“I just love writing in general so every chance I get is great,” said Paige who stretched some different muscles with her assignments. “I don’t really reflect on things, I usually just write different stories.”
One of the school’s goals in holding the festival was to communicate with and involve the community with the school’s activities, said Diversity Festival organizer Darrell DesRoches.
The club has also allowed the students to take a leadership role in getting the word out.
DesRoches said the festival is the start of something bigger.
“It’s been a great five weeks. You have to know, there’s been a buzz. Students want to talk about it,” he said. “Something was stirring.”
The festival had one theme per week to include the Mi’kmaq culture, LGBTQ+, international newcomers and francophone culture.
DesRoches credits Lauren Ryder with the Journalism Club’s formation and success.
“It’s one thing for us to talk about the event, but in those little pieces we see what those kids got out of it and reflected back the message that they got. It was cool to see,” said Ryder.
A journalist from the Journal Pioneer visited the club once a week for half an hour during the festival to introduce reporting, run a story meeting and help with editing.
A few samples written by members the Journalism Club:
Diving into diversity
By Samantha Coughlin
On Wednesday there was a presentation for the Grade 8 and 9 from Tom Hilton and Angele DesRoches.
Hilton is from the P.E.I. Human Rights Commission, and DesRoches is from the PEERS Alliance (PEERS means Prevent Educate Empower Respect Support).
The presentation was a huge success. Both the Grade 8 and 9 students were given the opportunity to ask questions following the presentations, in addition to questions which came from the “Question Boxes” which were located in student’s Health classes.
All students who attended the presentations received a diversity bookmark and a rainbow pamphlet with the LGBTQ+ diversity definitions.
LGBTQ+ issues and knowledge
By May Arsenault
The second week in our school’s diversity week was all about LGBTQ+ issues and the knowledge of such diversity.
The Grade 7 SIS students watched a presentation by the SIS GSA Group about the awareness of LGBTQ+ issues. As well as learning some offensive phrases, they learned the fluidity of the Kinsey scale (sexuality spectrum) and the gender spectrum.
After the presentation the grade sevens got to interact with the presenters via asking questions and getting some answers to questions that they may not have answered.
Celebrating differences
By Molly MacInnis
Regardless of how they identify, students made lots of fun memories at SIS recently.
At the second week of the SIS diversity festival, students celebrated their differences by learning more about LGBTQ+ issues.
Many students walked away with a deeper understanding of LGBTQ+ history and terminology after presentations by the SIS GSA club, the P.E.I. Human Rights Commission and the PEERS Alliance.
Aside from presentations, there were also fun activities like LGBTQ+ Jeopardy and pink shirt day to raise bullying awareness.
Mosiac week loads of fun
By Paige Walfield
Canadian Mosaic Week was both educational and lots of fun. I really enjoyed watching students participate in culturally diverse activities and listening to presenters discuss what culture means to them.
On Monday, we had a scavenger hunt which was very fun and very competitive, the winner was Ty Leblanc.
Tuesday morning fellow classmate Shaymaa Aldos spoke in Arabic on the announcements.
She shared a number of cool facts, like how 6.5 per cent of our population on P.E.I. are immigrants.
Wednesday we got to listen to a presentation from The Association of Newcomers to Canada.
“You have the power to welcome the world to your school,” said presenter Steve Lai.
I found that quote really awesome because we as a school need to welcome any new students with open arms and show them they don’t need to be afraid.
On Thursday in the cafeteria we had food from different countries that the students could sample.
We had a busy week. I was able to put aside that and just have fun, but I also got to fill my head with more knowledge about culture which is always cool too.
