Journalism is an elective here at school that allows you to be involved in a high-school-level online newspaper. Having journalism first period has been great because you can get everything done first thing in the morning, with a cup of coffee right there by your side. Every Monday, we are assigned one of the following categories: Cougar Tales (which is an article about anyone who attends or works at Sahuaro), Headline News (which is any story that is currently in the public news), Sahuaro News (which is anything in relation to happenings at Sahuaro), and Choice (which is anything you can come up with, such as reviews, opinions, etc.).

We begin class each day by discussing world events – everything from elections to mass shootings, to weird news (like the dirtiest man alive or the guy who runs marathons while chain-smoking) to what’s happening in Tucson this month, and everything in between.

Once we come into class on Monday and see what category we have for that week, we spend the rest of that day picking what we want to write about and planning when we can interview the people we need to. Or if you have headline news, you spend Monday picking a topic and then finding good articles to read for information.

We get things rolling on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and have the interviews or start writing our articles. Every week the article is due Thursday by the end of class. So to truly be on track, you need to have all of your information, quotes, and pictures by the end of the school day on Wednesday. If you are able to accomplishthat, then you can come into class on Thursday and knock out the actual writing portion and you are done.

Then once you get used to the process, you can come into class on Friday and start planning your next week’s article to get ahead, because Friday is just used for the editors to edit everything, and for Ms. Lange to publish as much as possible.

Taelyn Nordbrock said, “I like this class because it’s very calm, and there are nice people in here. You also only have to do one article a week, so it’s not that hard of work if you really try.”