Right now you are probably looking at a freshly printed paper enjoying your breakfast. Reading some interesting stories, but do you ever really know what goes into it? Do you really know the process that the students have to go through to get their voices into the little sliver of a page in which you are reading?

The first stage of the process is rough drafting. Finding a piece of news that you are invested in (some more than others). This paper isn’t just a bunch of articles thrown together, this is kids finally getting their say so on news, our views being heard, our thoughts being listened to. People always say, “Children should be seen and not heard”. Why? Aren’t we the future of America? One day won’t we be the adults that rule our country?

Next, we need to revise and critique our work. There’s a lot of cutting and pasting, adding detail, getting rid of too much detail. Wording, rewording, I think you get the point. What’s important about this stage is we get to share our work with peers and get feed back on our writing. It’s sometimes hard to get feedback on your work, but in the end it makes stronger, better pieces.

Lastly, we hand it into our Academic Advocate leader (in our case, Mrs. Duguay) for some last minute revisions. Then it’s off to the editor where we wait till the article gets put into the paper. Sometimes it only takes a week, sometimes months, because there’s 26 schools involved with the Advocate.

So imagine the joy some child out there has when they finally get into the Advocate, thinking, maybe, just maybe, their article had an impact on someone’s life. They’ve made a difference in the world for once. The Academic Advocate really shows you, the power of words.


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