Choose a topic, any topic, and tell us what you think.
That was the task given to students in Highland Park High School’s MAPS modern media course. The students rose to the occasion, writing about everything from concussions in youth football and how poor nutrition has contributed to disease, to how Disney has killed the Star Wars franchise.
In our December, January, and February issues, Park Cities People will publish three of the essays selected by Geoffrey Orsak, executive director of the Moody Innovation Institute.
We hope that these essays cause readers to reflect on both the content of their own views and how they form them.
“Just because I have an opinion doesn’t mean it’s right,” junior Carter Blurton told us. “Other people have things that they can add to a topic to spark a realization, or maybe a change.”
The high school’s modern media course is designed to take students on a deep dive into all forms of media, a category that includes both obvious sources of news, such as magazines and newspapers, and more subtle ones, such as handbills and posters.
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“There are more forms of media than you can shake a stick at,” explained teacher Jill Lewis. “It’s not just print, film, audio, video — it’s not just the small circle that we think of.”
Before writing their essays, students were encouraged to find examples of op-eds, and heard from both William McKenzie, senior editorial advisor at the George W. Bush Institute, and Dallas Cothrum, a contributing columnist at The Dallas Morning News.
Students started with only a template and bullet points, then completed multiple drafts during the opinion writing process, which to them was relatively new.
“Some of them really struggled,” Lewis said. “They’re so used to reporting about something that they’ve learned, not being so introspective.”
On page eight of this month’s issue, Park Cities People shares an essay by junior Noah Santoyo on the vital support provided by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which was recently placed in jeopardy due to the federal government shutdown.
In future issues, we will publish “Drowning in Expectations,” an article by junior Lane Pope on the toll that Highland Park ISD’s competitive culture takes on students’ mental health, and “No More Gun Deaths” by senior Liliana Rodriguez, who appeals for firearm policies that prioritize safety and protect young lives.
The essays are persuasive, but the goal of this project wasn’t only to change readers’ minds. MAPS teacher Lewis hopes that the writing process helped the juniors and seniors in her class find their own voice and become more thoughtful consumers of media themselves.
“If they have the foundation of who they are,” she said, “then they can have a healthy skepticism about what they intake.”
