By Rhys Baker

Clay Center Community High School Students are joining the National Writing Project. English Language Arts and Journalism Teacher Kelsie McFadden explains, “My students are each picking three community members that have impacted them or have a story to tell. We are using the curriculum from the Flint Hills Writing Project. Then, at the end of the month, Dawn Murphy and I are going to Colorado to meet with other teachers from across the country to find out what worked what didn’t work.”

McFadden continues by adding that the project serves a bigger purpose than just a single writing assignment in a high school course, “There are like 15 different school districts around the country that are doing this. They (The National Writing Project) created a housing website where we will be able to upload our information. We’ll be able to see our community compared to another community compared to another community. The goal is to advocate for rural towns; it’s not just big cities that matter. We want to emphasize places that might be overlooked and emphasize what is happening there.

Clay Center Community High School is part of the The National Writing Project’s Civic Journalism Initiative, which aims to create a powerful and spreadable model for engaging youth as local journalists on issues of public concern in their communities. NWP is committed to supporting young people’s writing and civic participation by providing a safe and supportive environment for youth writing, media creation, sharing, and publishing.