From Idea to Ink: Union’s Young Writers Make their Mark

Beneath the surface of a first edition, 24-page student magazine filled with content about the 6-7 phenomenon, K-Pop Demon Hunters and chubby cats is an eight-week adventure marked by persistence, partnership and pure hard work. 

The new writing club at Union Elementary, better known as Union Ink, culminated in so much more than a glossy magazine filled with by-lines from its fifth and sixth grade members. Led by Union English language arts teacher Lindsay Razete in partnership with two student volunteers from Lakota East’s Spark news magazine staff, the club gave its inaugural members an experience they are still raving about several weeks after it ended.

“People don’t know your story until you tell it. I wanted to show people my writing because it’s my dream,” said Union sixth grader Nour. “I got to share my views and my style. It sounded like it would be a lot of fun and spoiler alert…it was!” 

Fellow Union Ink staff member Cedar learned the power of persistence even before the club kicked off. The fifth grader spent most of last school year planting the idea with his principal, Jacob White. “Nearly every day, he came to me with actual writing samples of what could be part of a student newspaper,” said White, who eventually took the idea to Razete to help make it a reality. 

“Our kids are so creative and such avid writers,” Razete said. “I wanted to help create something that would motivate them to continue writing into high school. It’s such a dying art, especially with technology.” 

Wanting it to be more than just a newspaper production, Razete tapped into the expertise of the award-winning journalism program at Lakota East to help make it a true writing club. East senior Madie Cline and junior Maci Brent immediately answered the call for help. Together with Razete, they went to work on their writing workshop ideas - prompts like, “Write a spooky story in 10 sentences,” or “Write anything using these story elements.” “Pass the Story” and “Pass the Poem” turned out to be especially popular collaborative writing exercises. Students filled their custom journals during each club meeting. 

Cline and Brent also tackled technical skills like photo caption writing and writing for different genres like opinion versus news, for instance. “We basically took what we’ve learned in Spark and simplified it a bit,” Maci said. 

But their experience went far deeper than learning sentence structure and story arcs. Students also discovered the power of their own voices. In fact, most could agree that sharing their writing was their favorite part of all. “Their eagerness compared to high school students was really cool to see,” reflected Maci, who shared that even her journalism peers struggle with the vulnerabilities of sharing their work. “They are all there because they love writing…and they’re really good at it too!,” she added. 

And somewhere in the midst of all the creative writing fun, the group found time to produce a full-blown magazine. Seeing past editions of the high school magazine sparked a lot of discussion about how to pull it off at Union. Ultimately, the group decided to model their publication after the Spark, adopting many of the same content sections like features, opinion, sports, culture and entertainment.

“I liked seeing them set up their own mini Spark,” said Madie, remembering that it was “like watching mini us’s” when the group went to work copy-editing their final drafts. The pages were laid out all around the room and students visited each page, adding their own post-it note with changes at each stop. 

Maci and Madie laughed as they reflected on the actual content that “made the cut” - a feature on the 6-7 anomaly, an opinion piece debating both sides of the age-old “homework vs. no homework” argument, a Union music playlist, and countless polls about the best Saja Boy from K-Pop Demon Hunters, Stanleys versus Owalas and Nike versus Converse. “It really encapsulates what went on every Wednesday during Writing Club,” Madie laughed. “Those are things they would talk about every Wednesday.”

And to them, that was perhaps the most beautiful part of the whole experience. 

“Ms. Razete did such a great job at hearing the thousands of ideas that came out of the group and steering them in a way they didn’t lose ownership of their work,” Madie said. 

“She was great at letting them co-create. She let us do our thing and trusted the students to do their thing,” added Maci, saying that the whole experience solidified her aspirations to one day be an elementary school language arts teacher. “She embodied the teacher that I would want to be.” 

As for the aspiring writers, the benefits of the experience were broad. Sixth grader Diluz was first drawn in at the chance “to repeat fifth grade with Ms. Razete.” She especially enjoyed the opportunity to interview and get to know more Union teachers. Sixth grader Ben had the idea to move his journal to Canva, where he invited his peers to contribute and make it a digital collection of all their ideas. As for sixth grader Dalila, she set out with one goal in mind: To have at least one article with her name on it. She certainly accomplished that. 

The experience wasn’t just transformative for the younger writers either. For Maci and Madie, mentoring the club offered a refreshing perspective. “I liked hearing all their ideas without all the seriousness,” Maci reflected. “It helped me a lot because we deal with a lot of heavy topics all day every day and it just made me break out of that zone.” 

This is just the beginning for “The Hawk Times” too. In an effort to make the group feel different than a regular class, Razete caps participation, but still has two more after-school sessions to offer this school year. She hopes she doesn’t have to turn any student away, but has been impressed with the response. “It’s awesome that so many people want to write for their peers,” she said. “That can be scary, but they obviously want to share their voice and that makes my teacher heart happy.” 

Click here to read the first edition of “The Hawk Times,” presented by Union Ink.