Poynter High - Story Ideas

Reading Poynter colleague Al Tompkins' post about high demand at food banks made me think: How are school service clubs responding to the financial crisis in their communities?

Have food drives replaced trash pick-up days? Are clubs that might have raised awareness of global warming focused instead on helping teens find seasonal jobs to help their families pay the bills?

If they aren't, should they? Could they?

Have you ever reported on the good works that your school service clubs do? What causes did they support last year? Five years ago? What are the priorities this year?

Consider an alternative way to tell this story, using a "charticle" to compare the work of several service clubs. Could you create a map that showed students where local community service groups are located, what service clubs are doing for them and that lists their needs?

If you do, email me a link. I'd love to see it.

Gift giving in an economic crisis? Fear not. Green gifts to the rescue! 

In your next issue, why not provide students with "A Guide to Green Gift Giving"?  Here are a few ideas to get you started. 

• Start with homemade gift ideas - whether handmade cards, homemade cookies or even a hand-knitted scarf, nothing says Happy Holidays like a gift made of TLC.  Make these gifts green by using materials around the house: dig out old yarn and paper scraps that your mom has kept stuffed in the closet for decades, and never underestimate how many cookie ingredients can be found in hidden in the back of the pantry. 
  
• Check out the ultimate in Green Gift Giving: the Design Sponge blog, managed by writer and creativity extraordinaire Grace Bonney.  She offers great ideas for DIY Green Gifts, whether it's a recipe for homemade bath salts or instructions on how to put together a journal of recycled paper.
• The BookSwim alternative.  Rather than giving another paper-wasting subscription to a 200 page magazine, why not give a subscription to BookSwim?  For a monthly fee, subscribers get access to a huge online library of paperback books, shipped for free in 100% recycled bags.  Save gas by not driving to the library, and feel good knowing once you've read a book and shipped it back, more and more people can do the same.

Eco-friendly ways to give gifts and save yourself a little green while you're at it?  Happy Holidays!

For high schoolers in a New York suburb, choosing next semester's classes just got a little more interesting. 

According to a recent article in the New York Times, the students at Pelham Memorial High School can now have 17 new electives to choose from, adding the spice of life to a pure academic schedule. 

"Now, budding musicians take guitar lessons, amateur war historians re-enact military battles, and future engineers build solar-powered cars — all during school hours, and for credit," writes Times reporter Winnie Hu.

After the No Child Left Behind Act, many elective programs were replaced with more math and science options, to ready students for the rigors of federal testing.  Administrators say they hope the added electives keep seniors interested in school. 

• How many electives are offered at your high school? How many were there last year? How many does your rival school offer?
  
• What electives have been dropped or added in the last year?  Since five years ago? Ten years ago?
  
• Ask students which electives they would most like to see offered, creating an infobox with your survey responses

Maybe your article will spark talks of adding an advanced breakdancing course as an elective?