Club Reporters publish BlueChips Newspaper at Takoma Middle School

BY CAROLINE KANG AND JORDAN TURNER

The clack, clack, clack of students' keyboards and the click, click, click of their mice set the scene every Tuesday and Thursday, at Takoma Park Middle School's BlueChips Newspaper Club. Students of different backgrounds work together diligently, accomplishing the goals for the day, which have been written on the whiteboard by Ms. Tyla Turner, the Newspaper Club's sponsor.

Each club member has a different task, like in a real newspaper: the writers provide articles on the latest school news, from school dances to basketball games; the reporters get information about school and national news; the photographers take pictures that give readers a better understanding of the articles, and they scan the photos into the computer; and the editors make sure the articles are grammatically correct. A few members of the Newspaper Club have developed a website (www.tpmsbluechips.com) that features the same topics that are in the paper version.

The finished paper may not be as refined as Blair's Silver Chips, but, hey, that's the best part of BlueChips! The Newspaper Club is not just a club that produces a newspaper, it's also a place to learn all about journalism, newspaper production, and HTML. Plus, "the Newspaper Club provides a great opportunity for the students to express themselves in a world in which they normally aren't able to," says club sponsor, Ms. Turner.

Being on the BlueChips staff has other rewards, too. It's a great place to make friends and to enjoy being with them. When all the work has been done and the newspaper has been distributed, the members of the Newspaper Club sit back, relax, and congratulate each other on the wonderful job they've done, before starting work on the next issue. Once in a while, they even take an afternoon off and have a party with pizza and soda.

TPMS Students Rally for Peace

BY AMELIA COFFEY, STAFF WRITER, TAKOMA PARK MIDDLE SCHOOL BLUECHIPS

On Wednesday, March 5^th, 17 Takoma Park Middle School students joined together in front of the Takoma Park Municipal Building to protest the war on Iraq. One of the organizers, 6^th grader Maya Maldonado-Weinstein said she decided to organize this protest because she was "mad about [the reason] why the president wants to go to war." She believes it "wasn't a good reason," and she "wanted to do something about it; to make a difference."

The students wanted to do something to express their feelings. But they didn't want to get into trouble, so they got permission from their parents to leave school early. They left at 1 o'clock and marched down through Takoma Park, holding up signs and chanting "1, 2, 3, 4–we don't want to go to war! 5, 6, 7, 8–war is bad, peace is great!"

"We made the '5, 6, 7, 8' part up," said 6^th grader Alexandra Spillbury. "The other part I heard before."

When they arrived at the Municipal Building, the students stood in front of the building by the street, chanting, singing, and holding up a hand-made poster that really symbolized how they felt. Peace supporters going by in their cars honked their horns and held their hands out of their widows.

Many of the students who participated in the march said it feels really good to know they did this. They said they had wanted to do something about the war for a long time, but they had figured, "we're just kids. What can we do? And we thought this was a great idea!" Things like this help prove that kids can stand up and be heard.