Mission Impossible: Accomplished

The view from my porch!

My Journalism class accomplished the impossible this week.  In the early 1980s the village published a series of booklets documenting their culture and history.  These booklets have been cited in text books and used as primary resources for anthropologists studying the traditional Sugpiaq culture (we had to use them in our cultural class).  The school received a grant this year for an art project and decided they should make a new edition of this series.  The grant could have been used for any art project, but that detail was left out until it was too late to matter.  Between the beginning of the class (Journalism is only a semester course in this district) and the deadline our students had 3 months to review the first 3 editions, develop ideas for the new book, interview elders, organize the information, create articles that are ready for publishing and hold to the same standards of quality in cultural information as the first, design a layout, and put everything into the final document to be printed.  I have a whole new respect for magazine and newspaper editors.  Miraculously, we finished.  I would love to say with time to spare, but I was up to the very last minute.  Eric was waiting in his mud boots with his luggage to go catch the plane when I handed everything over, but it is finished and I am so very relieved.  Now, if I can get the yearbook finished, I'll be doing my little dance all my students have come to know and ridicule me for.  God gave me no rhythm or coordination.  I can admit it.