Eight months ago, the Journalism Stars club didn’t exist at PS 102 in Brooklyn. Today 20/20 Vision for Schools joins Jeremy Del Rio in celebrating the sixth issue of their online publication, Our Virtual Journal, since January.
Here’s the tribute Jeremy shared on his website for Margaret Sheri, PS 102′s amazingly inspired parent coordinator. Enjoy!
In October 2009, Margaret Sheri had a dream that one day PS 102 students would find their voices, tell their stories, and create a platform for the world to celebrate their school community. She imagined an online journalism club that overcame budget cuts to the school newspaper to regularly publish stories of students learning, growing, and discovering the world together.
She recruited two parents to help her and a dozen fourth graders to lead the way on a crazy adventure that produced six monthly issues from January-June 2010 organized around the elements of storytelling, six basic questions: who, what, when, where, how, and why. They built the club on a simple idea that the most interesting stories are the stories of our lives, and the job of journalists is to tell those stories.
This final issue of the 2009-2010 school year is The Virtual Journal‘s “Why? Issue.” In it, our students explore why journalism matters — to tell stories like Ms. Sheri’s of everyday heroes whose lives sacrificially benefit others around them — and more specifically why Journalism Stars matters. Stories like Ms. Sheri’s take place everyday at PS 102, and someone has to tell them. What better storytellers than the students who live them alongside caring adults like Margaret Sheri?
Thanks, Margaret, for your leadership enriching the lives of 1,100+ students, parents, and staff at PS 102. New York City’s 1,500 public schools would be in much better shape with 1,500 parent coordinators just like you.
