Advice for teachers

So, your students want to start a magazine?

By Antonia Breslin, Teacher of English at Yarm School, North Yorkshire.

Your students want to start a magazine? Brilliant! Here are five steps to help them turn their ambition into something real, while keeping the students firmly in the driving seat.

• Start with their voice
  Ask them why they want to create a magazine. What do they want to say? Who do they want to reach? What do they want it to feel like? Young people have ideas in abundance, so let them run with them. Your role is to listen, ask questions and help them shape those ideas into something workable.But a magazine needs more than an enthusiastic editorial team – whether that is one student or a group of them. It needs content, and that means getting the whole school involved. Once the ambition is there, start thinking about how you are going to bring everyone else into it.
• Make the whole school part of the idea
  Ask your students to think about how they are going to pitch the magazine to the rest of the school. They need to communicate the vision, inspire their peers to contribute and, importantly, make every student feel that this is something that they can help create. Even something as simple as choosing a name can build that sense of ownership. If your school were called ‘Sacred Heart’, for example, students might suggest names such as ‘Pulse’, ‘Acushla’ or ‘The Beat’. Pitch the magazine in a whole school assembly. Announce the names. Let the school vote. It is a small thing, but it immediately makes the magazine feel less like something being done by an exclusive group of students and more like something being created by them.
• Don’t wait for the content to come to you
  A call for content is a good start, but don’t simply sit back and hope the work arrives. Encourage students to approach teachers they have good relationships with and ask: “Who do you know who might have something to say?”, “Who writes?”, “Who draws?”, “Who has an idea but might need a little encouragement?” You might have to give your colleagues the occasional gentle nudge in the staffroom when they are slow to get back to students (we are all busy, after all), but those relationships can be invaluable in helping students find contributors.When it comes to the actual content, let the magazine take on a life of its own. Our students always know what the Shine theme is, but we are never ruled by it. They are free to use the magazine as their own platform. Remember, this isn’t a ‘school’ magazine. It is a ‘student’ magazine. That distinction matters. The students should create it, shape it and ultimately feel that it belongs to them.
• Build your bank of content
  Create one central place where everything can be submitted and stored. From there, the editorial team can begin selecting, editing and shaping the work piece by piece. As the magazine develops, you might find it useful to create more formal editorial roles. Over the years, we have appointed Directors of Fiction and Non-Fiction (often former editors or Shine Award Winners) who work with younger students to give them some feedback on their pieces. You may not have that more formal structure when you are starting, but you don’t need it. Simply encourage older students to sit down with younger students and help them redraft. Teach them that editing isn’t about correcting someone’s voice; it is about helping them shape and structure their writing so it is as strong as it can be.
• Make the final product matter
  Once everything is in one place, the real editorial work begins. Encourage your team to move things around. Encourage your team to try different combinations. Look at the magazine as a whole rather than as a collection of individual pieces. Prompt your students to think about the reader’s journey. What does the cover say about your student body? What story does the magazine tell as a whole? What messages is it conveying? Ensure that they leave themselves time for this. Having all the content in one place does not mean that their job is finished. Revise. Restructure. Re-read. Cut. Add. Question your choices.