Schools
What's the Buzz? Busy Bees Making News at Seth Boyden
Students at Seth Boyden — with the help of some dedicated parent volunteers — publish the Boyden Buzz newspaper three times per year.
Talk about your hyperlocal news.
The "Boyden Buzz" is a newspaper that covers a very special territory — on Boyden Avenue in Maplewood. But the ideas and topics that fill its pages show that students have a worldview that extends far beyond the schools walls, playgrounds and Strawberry Fields garden. (The students themselves hail from both Maplewood and South Orange.)
The fall 2010 edition of the Buzz saw Sylvia Osner and Kaydi Zembow writing about giant pandas, Sasha Aronson penning a piece on Chilean miners, and Amelia Cintron-Burch effusively recommending the program "Extreme Engineering" for its coverage on topics such as the making of the Panama Canal.
Find out what's happening in South Orangewith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Still, the Buzz also keeps it local: Naomi Fisch, Noelle Heriveaux and Taniah Major interviewed teacher Ms. Vine; Sophia Heriveaux, Yasmin Nazhat and Sage Savoia-Degregorio reported on the Harvest Festival; and Eden Taub and Elizabeth Ko filled everyone in on the new knitting teacher, Ms. Kari Capone.
The Buzz is published three times a year, and is written by 4th and 5th graders, with 3rd graders contributing in the second half of the school year. Julie Burch and Michael Paris moderate with help from Jeanine Heriveaux, and yours truly, Mary Mann. Susie Adamson whipped up the layout for the four-page fall issue (on 11"' x 17" paper).
Find out what's happening in South Orangewith free, real-time updates from Patch.
I've had the pleasure of assisting Paris and the 5th grade students on Fridays. Working from materials and boards created by Burch — who has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan — Paris has been explaining the tenets of journalism to students (he's even got a diagram with the age-old inverted pyramid story form) and to get them to submit items beyond word scrambles and yes/no surveys. For example, in a survey of students regarding the popular chapter book series "Warriors" by Erin Hunter, reporters Eden Taub and Ella Opdenberg took the article beyond the numbers and wrote arguments for and against the books.
(Paris wanted to make sure that Patch readers understand that Burch is the major motor behind the Buzz, generating the poster boards and the journalism educational materials for the students. "She also did more work on organizing the much improved layout this year," said Paris.)
Other items in the fall issues spanned the journalistic rainbow from news to features to sports. Thrown into the mix were poetry, mad libs and a few pen and ink cartoons.
Can an online version be far behind?
The fall 2010 Buzz newsroom included:
Grade 4
- Amelia Cintron-Burch
- Anna Curran
- Olive Fretts-Howard
- Joseph Holdom
- Bella Jacques-Haeberle
- Jenilee Jean-Pierre
- Alexandra Kass-Lavalle
- Elizabeth Ko
- Jasper Kransdorf
- Benjina Laurent
- Evelyn Lazen
- Lulu Mansfield-Greenwald
- Christopher Millevoix
- Shane Mills
- Ella Opdenberg
- William Roth
- Isaac Shiftic
- Myles Springs
- Eden Taub
- Rosa Wolff
- Kelvin Ubaechu
Grade 5
- Sasha Aronson
- Katiana Baronvil
- Tatiyana Beasley
- Abayneh Charles
- Naomi Fisch
- Natasha Gerstmann
- Noelle Heriveaux
- Sophia Heriveaux
- Teddy Higer-Paris
- Daniel Laoye
- Orizia Logus
- Taniah Major
- Yasmin Nazhat
- Sylvia Osner
- Nora Osit
- Sage Savoia-DiGregorio
- Madie Reilly
- J.P. White
- Kaydi Zembow
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