ENGL 230 Project, the Second Time Around

Juicy Peppah

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It was the second semester of 2008 when we English majors were immersed into school paper founding for the first time. It was one of the requirements we have to accomplish in order to pass ENGL 230, or Campus Journalism.

That time, we were tasked to mentor potential writers on how to write newspaper articles, as well as laying out newspapers. We were even required to produce a copy of the paper at the end of the semester.

And after one wonderful semester of real-life learning experience, I was taken back to the school situation, but no longer the one who would write articles for the high school or the university, but to pass on to the next generation what I have learned from CLSU Collegian and from ENGL 230.

About 1pm, November 25, 2011, I was just starting to clean our house when I received a call from Lau, my classmate in college; a fellow English major. One of his tasks as a teacher was to handle a school paper. When he called me that afternoon, he asked me to help train his students in writing newspaper articles.

I was tasked to speak to the students about news writing, feature writing, editorial writing, sports writing, copy reading and headline writing, and photojournalism to prepare them for the 2^nd Division Secondary Schools Press Conference, December 1 and 2. Although I thought he could already handle it because we went through the same class two years ago, he said I was more experienced because I was the one frequently applying what we have learned from the course.

That call made me excited. It is only once in a blue moon that I would be asked for help, and I am only too willing to extend mine anytime. We kept communicating about it, and although I have already planned the flow of discussion, on Monday, I arrived with nothing but experience and a few pages of two national newspapers. Thanks to mama for telling me about it. Besides, I thought it would be best if students would learn from real materials.

At first I thought I would be tensed soon as I arrive to ULHS (University Laboratory High School) Pinili because I was not technically prepared. Besides, I was not a good public speaker, not to mention a lousy practice teacher too. But when I was already standing before the chosen students, I thought, why not ask their names and their forte first? I didn’t know why, but I did anyway.

When I did so, I found out that out of the 14 participants, 12 knew how to write news articles, two knew how to write sports articles, and only one knew how to write a feature article, so I told them that after the lecture, they will learn how to be an all-around writer, as Lau also expected them to be at the end of the day.

When I reviewed them, I was disorganized, but I think I explained it well (I used English and Filipino, by the way). I started with the characteristics of journalistic writing followed by headline writing, news writing, sports writing, photojournalism, feature writing, editorial writing, and then copy reading. Really disorganized. But I think that was what the students needed, so I organized it that way.

One of the activities I remembered when discussing was when I asked students who were good in news writing to share their experiences in writing articles. I did the same in other categories. I even asked the best sports writer to discuss how he writes scores down in an article.

During the review, Lau would also give additional inputs—further explanations or the ones I must have missed—and that made me glad, because, I would admit, I don’t know everything.

At the end of the day, we were able to choose which student fits what category. I would really have wanted to return the next day to give further assistance, but aside from there was somewhere I was scheduled to go for the day, I also believe Lau and his students could do it. I was glad I was able to give even a little help.