Last school year, Greater Latrobe Junior High expanded its course catalog and incorporated several new electives. These courses consist of a future career-based curriculum. New life skills and unfamiliar social experiences are introduced—one of the added classes, taught by Ms. Welty, is The Junior High Post.
This class is an introduction to the Multimedia Journalism elective offered to grades 10-12 in the high school. The Junior High Post curates standing heads and videos with interviews on its website. “We write news articles on current topics and things that are going on around the school,” explained Welty. Some examples on the websites are “What’s New in the School Library,” by Rylee Shenego, and “Dream Colleges of GLJH Students,” by Addie Huffaker. Student and teacher features are also implemented.
The first step of the story process for students is brainstorming a list of possible ideas. After the list is complete, they fill out a Google Form of their top five article choices. “When they submit the forms, I go through them and assign everyone a topic based on their preferences,” Welty recalled. The next step is to fill out a paper to write out their plan of action. Welty described the next part—“They say what they’re going to write about, come up with a title, decide if they need an interview, and then email a teacher if needed.” After students complete the planning page, they conduct their interviews. They have to set up a designated time and location for the interview and use cameras to film. “Once the students retrieve their content, and form their rough drafts, I send back corrections and they edit them,” summarized Welty. Once the final draft is complete, the work is submitted and posted to The Junior High Post website.
