Zine Project, Part 1

I'm doing fieldwork in a 7th grade class, and rather than just passively observing, I got involved in the class.  To preface this lesson, a "history lesson" about me is needed:
I was young and punk rock once. During that time, I thought it would be cool to publish a zine (a homemade magazine.)  I published it, full of photos, poems,  essays, stories, and letters to no one.  It was corny, but it was a great way of expressing myself.  It paid off though: I sent a copy to ELLEgirl magazine, a teen fashion magazine at the time, and they offered me an internship, despite the fact that I was just graduating high school and not in any journalism program.  I wrote articles for them including one about how cool  zines are.
When I started my fieldwork, my teacher looked at my resume and noticed the ELLEgirl thing and wondered if I would be willing to teach a lesson about what working there was like.  I thought about it, and decided to take it a step farther: I would talk about that, and then we would make a class zine.

First, the handout:

I talked to the class for a few minutes about how I got my job at ELLEgirl, showed them the article on zines, and talked about what zines are.  Then, I told them that they would be making one.  Before class started, I heard kids complaining about this new project that they were getting, but once I explained it, there was a shift int he room: kids seemed interested.  It was a new way of having a class literary magazine: it's more punk rock, creative, and do-it-yourself.  It's hands on, and it's gritty.  It's not laid out perfectly, it should look messy.  The title should be silly.  I told them they could have a poem, short story, or an essay- even one about why they hate homework, and that got them excited!

Then, we worked on finding a name.  I wasn't sure how this would play out: would hey be able to come up with something interesting or would they get stuck?  I didn't have to worry. Within 5 minutes, we had a huge list of names:
Clutch
Prototype
Alien Workshop
Breaking Apart
Neon Colors
Better than Joey's Magazine, Magazine
and a whole lot more.

We used the Smart Board to write them all up, then did a preliminary vote to get down to 6 titles- each student could vote three times.  Then, with the top 6, we had a final vote, and the winner was "Better than Joey's** Magazine, Magazine."  Joey is a hilarious kid, totally self-aware and he loved it.  The name was a joke between him and his group, since he had come up with a name option, their response to his was to create "Better than Joey's Magazine, Magazine."  I was originally a little uncomfortable with it, but the teacher, who knows the students, was ok with it, and clearly Joey was too, since he was the one who voted most emphatically for it.

While they talked about the title, I circulated with a mock zine I had made for Beauty and the Beast, the short story that they were reading in class the week before.  I also circulated the magazines I had articles in, so they could take a look at the kinds of things that I wrote.  I walked around and they asked me a lot of questions about the job and about the zine, and talked to me about their article ideas- everything from poems to video game reviews!

I'll write more on this later, but after we had my section of the class, the students got to work on another project, and this time, instead of me being an outsider and sort of suspicious to the students, they were eager to share their projects.  And I was amazed with the levels of technology used!  Some of the kids had made their own simple programs or video games, and while they didn't have as much to do with the subject of the project as they could have, their technological literacy was shocking to me.

I'm thinking that what really brought the project to life for them was the hook that I used to get them interested- showing them a view of me as a kid and what I was into, and the practical applications of it (a zine got me a really cool job!)  Teachers should definitely try to show kids that they can be "real people" too- though I think this is more effective if you don't do it all of the time, so it has "shock value" when you do utilize it.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what they come in with next week, and how it translates into a zine.  I have a few great tricks up my sleeve for it...


**Names have been changed