HEBRON — The Oxford Hills School District is a place where students have robust opportunities to pursue a broad curriculum but has lacked a student-run newspaper.

That changed last year when Ori Brennan, a then-third grader at Hebron Station School, decided to start one herself — Hawk News.

According to Brennan, “People need to know what’s up and be able to rethink things. And it’s good to know about cool school events and things like that.”

Brennan wrote a pitch which she presented to then-Principal Jamey Martin for consideration. Martin immediately jumped on board with the idea, announcing Brennan’s plan during a schoolwide morning meeting and asking for volunteers to sign on as editors and reporters.

Brennan said that around 10 kids from pre-K to sixth grade immediately signed up.

The first edition of Hawk News was enthusiastically received by the student body, but its editorial staff knew they could do better.

“We hand wrote it,” Brennan explained. “It wasn’t well edited and there were typos in it. We wanted to make it more professional. Typed out and printed.”

So, following their inaugural issue, she and her crew set about improving it. Last fall they began typing out their articles and each edition of Hawk News had a logo with official volume and issue information. Stories include bylines and images with captions.

Recent issues of Hawk News feature articles about preschool, open houses, field trips, honoring veterans and profiles of the school’s new principal, Douglas Kilmister, as well as nutrition educator Wes Nugteren.

Branching out to cover broader district news, Brennan has interviewed Superintendent Heather Manchester about increasing nutrition in school meals. More recently she talked with Hebron’s school board directors, Lew Williams and Amanda Fearon, about nutrition and the work they do.

One story first reported in Hawk News last year was about a campaign thanking the school’s educators. As part of the positive behavior intervention supports program, students earn “hawk eyes” for good behavior.

For the school newspaper, the kids turned the tables on the PBIS concept and awarded all their teachers with their own hawk eyes.

“We interviewed students about what they like about their teachers, and gave them awards based on what (kids) liked best about them.” Brennan said. “I’d like to do that again this year. I think that would be cool.”

As founding editor, it is up to Brennan to set up content for each issue and making sure the reporters know what their story assignments are. Proofreading responsibilities are shared by a handful of student editors before the edition is published.

A print copy of the newspaper is distributed to each student, and it is also uploaded to Seesaw, the school’s family communications platform.

Brennan is eager to learn more about journalism so she took a few minutes to interview this reporter: “How did you start out in journalism?” she asked. We had a discussion about different jobs in journalism including working at magazines, where I first learned about publishing.

The Advertiser Democrat visited Hebron Station School earlier this month to talk shop with Oxford Hill’s next generation of journalists. Editors Brennan, Aaron Nizamoff and Thomas Yancey, as well as writers Ava McCafferty and Bryn Yancey, were in attendance. Sawyer Cavers, also an editor and key contributor, was unable to attend.

Q&A with the young journalists

Q: Why did you join the newspaper?

Thomas Yancey: I joined the paper because I wanted to try something interesting, and get out of class sometimes.”

Bryn Yancey: I decided to join the paper because I really like stories and I’m the only one that has finished keyboarding (note: what was called typing class back in the day is now referred to as keyboarding). And I like knowing information about people and what’s going on around the school.”

Nizamoff: I started because I like typing and I like recording things, taking down ideas from people and writing about them. And I like reporting big things that are happening, the big events that happen at our school.”

McCafferty: I’m not an editor, but I wanted to do something my friends were doing. So I write stories for the paper.”

Q: What are important topics for Hawk News?

Brennan: I think people should know that a bunch of kids thought about an idea and that kids can do a lot of things.”

Nizamoff: I think we should spread the word that kids can write newspapers, too. It’s not a very big school so we can spread the word about it, and about our events that happen.”

Bryn Yancey: I think writing stories is important, sometimes people don’t understand the topic, and we explain why things are done. We should all know about stuff that happens in other grades. Like, we had someone come to talk about disabilities, but every class learned about a different disability. I interviewed the lady on text, and I’m asking some of the students what they thought about it, to write (a story).”

Brennan: In our class, we’re going outside and we’re studying what Maine was like 1,000 years ago. I’ll write an article about that. Because even though the other students aren’t doing what we’re doing, we can tell them about it and they might learn a little.”

Q: How do you work as a team?

Nizamoff: We all have different talents and things we like. Thomas likes history. We all like getting new ideas.”

Thomas Yancey: I do. I want to be an Egyptologist. Not general archaeology, but a specialist who only does Egypt archaeology.”

Bryn Yancey: I like the present and learning about people. (Pop culture) … I really like Weird Al Yankovic because I like pop and comedy and music.”

Brennan explained that reading is important for all the kids, and not just the news.

“I like reading,” she said. “About different things like fiction and nonfiction and fantasy. There is so much to explore and you can learn about different things by reading one thing: a newspaper.”

“I agree with Ori about reading fantasy,” Bryn Yancey added. “Except when it’s about some helpless girl in a tower and a man has to save her,” summarizing why her contributions are focused on the here and now, not historical topics.

One thing all the students agreed on is that reporting school news has become an important mission for them, and they intend to take it with them when they eventually move onto Oxford Hills middle and high schools.

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