Maya Kowalcyk, an English teacher at Carbon Career & Technical Institute and the school’s student newspaper adviser, and senior Ash Little, the paper’s editor, addressed the CCTI Joint Operating Committee recently.

“With this digital age, and especially over the last few decades, newspapers and journalism are kind of in trouble,” Kowalcyk said. “The students in our club learn people skills, communication skills. Students are able to interview other students and staff. They learn how to do research, how to sift through data and determine what is credible. And they learn literacy skills like grammar and punctuation.” The Newspaper club and I are going to a ‘Save Journalism’ conference for high school students.”

Little said she is excited about working with “The Buzz,” the student newspaper.

“I was in the newspaper back at my home school, PV (Panther Valley). It was called ‘Pawprints,’” she said. “It was a great experience, but, it left me wanting to do more. It wasn’t a true newspaper. We just took stock paper, printed it, and folded it in half. This year we started the newspaper here. I was so stoked; I wanted so bad to be in it. I just wanted to write articles.” Little said she was surprised to named the editor.

“Now that I’m doing it, I realize how much of a responsibility it is,” she said. “It definitely is teaching us how to take responsibility and accountability for what we’re doing. But it is also giving us the opportunity to take pride in what we do. We made this, we made this newspaper.”