Spring Branch ISD Featured News

3…2…1…At Spring Woods Middle School, that countdown signals the beginning of the morning announcements which just got an exciting upgrade.

Under the direction of English language arts teacher Brandon McArthur and instructional specialist Regina Cooper, Spring Woods Middle now has a thriving journalism club which produces and records the daily Morning Show. McArthur created this club to give students an opportunity to use the incredible writing and artistic talents they had and put them to a creative use.

The club and its 15 participants are divided into three sections comprised of the Morning Show, a newspaper team and a yearbook team.

The Morning Show team is responsible for a daily video segment emailed out to every teacher at the school. The executive producer designs and scripts the show for each anchor and reporter. While the executive producer is scripting the show, the other members are setting up the equipment and doing any final sound checks and show prep. After they record the episode, the producers quickly edit pledges, graphics or mistakes from the episode. Once the final touches have been made, they send McArthur the link to email out amongst the staff.

The newspaper team focuses on releasing a new issue every two weeks. After deciding on three major stories they want to write for an issue, the head editor assigns which reporters are on each story. The reporters must decide on their questions and what the angle of their story will be.

The yearbook team is tasked with creating a digital-format yearbook. The head editor makes sure that everyone knows what section of the yearbook they are assigned to and gets final say on design and layout. The junior editor oversees any written word that goes into the yearbook. In its digital format, the yearbook will be accessible to all SWMS students, including those who may not be able to pay for a printed one.

Aligning with SBISD’s Core Characteristics of a T-2-4 Ready Graduate, the pillars of the journalism club are that students become persistent and adaptable while learning to be good communicators and collaborators. Students are learning the hard work that goes into creating consistent and engaging content, while working with each other to complete the various components that it takes.

The Spring Woods Middle Journalism Club allows students to explore career paths that are creative, innovative and versatile.

Morning Show anchor and eighth grader Josiah first became interested in this club during a career day presentation by McArthur. He noticed how much fun journalism as a career could be and wanted to try it.

Eighth grader Christina is the newspaper editor and loves that she gets to be creative and help put the show together from the ground up. Christina, along with other newspaper students, also create the graphic elements for every broadcast.

Now, teachers at Spring Woods Middle are becoming interested and doing their part to provide story ideas to the club to help them showcase the good things happening at their school.

“I can’t thank these students enough. We’ve created this class from the ground up and I couldn’t have asked for a better group,” McArthur said. “I hope these students one day realize they left a true impact on Spring Woods. My hope is we change how the morning announcements are done forever. It’s pretty cool if you are one of the students who can say, ‘I was a big reason why this class exists.’”