Student Voices Rise from the Crowd

There is nothing more frightening to a writer than a blank sheet of paper, and as I looked out across the first staff meeting for the school’s literary magazine, I saw 20 blank sheets of paper staring back at me.

We needed a theme.

In the fall, the magazine staff members meet to decide upon a theme that will inspire their peers to write throughout the year. By the spring we can produce a book representing all student voices.

At my prompting, the student staff talked about what the magazine means to them.

“It’s a place for us to be creative.”

“We get to produce something cool.”

“Having your work printed, in a book, is just the best feeling.”

“Seeing all the artwork is awesome.”

“This is a place where we get to say things that are true.”

Finally, Caitlin, our thoughtful but intensely quiet editor-in-chief, spoke, “We get to produce something that has meaning. We have a voice.”

Then the ideas began to flow. They batted ideas around for the remainder of the meeting and for the next three meetings. The inspirational theme for the year: “Rebel and Conform.”

Caitlin, a junior, later explained this theme to the student body. “We traditionally view conformity negatively, but isn’t there something good about belonging to a group? As adolescents, we are expected to rebel. Isn’t our ‘rebellion’ then also ‘conformity’? Can we do them both at once? Conform to our peers. Rebel from our parents. How do rebellion and conformity work within each other?”

We hoped that our theme would resonate with the student body and elicit varied responses from our diverse students. We wanted it to move them to write.

Then we waited.

In December, we waited.

In January, we waited.

And then the submissions started coming in. There was a nonfiction composition about overcoming severe dyslexia. We had a senior writing about her Pakistani heritage and her father breaking with an arranged marriage to marry her mother. There were poems by young women dealing with the pressure to be thin. Another Pakistani student wrote about the beauty of her country and the violence that ravages it. And there was an essay by a young woman about the impact of television commercials on body image and adolescent development.

The crowd hadn’t merely spoken. It had sung.

Caitlin isn’t one who shows much emotion, but when we read through the finished book, her smile filled the entire campus.

Elliott is a high school English teacher in Texas.