Mission Topic, Purpose, and Hypothesis:

“In order to succeed, your desire for success must be greater than your fear of failure.” Cosby’s words help us be calmer and less fearful with our project and contacting other people in fear of rejection. We also use Cosby’s words to help us be more confident about finishing contacting people and moving on to finally write, edit, and revise the first page of our newspaper.

Our mission is making a school newspaper. The purpose of our mission is to make a school newspaper to inform others about what’s going on at George Washington Middle School.  Our hypothesis is that if we inform other about what’s going on, then they would go do their after school activities more often. Also, if we make a school newspaper, it can encourage other students to join our newspaper club and make them improve their reading and writing skill, which will make grades go up, and also test scores. With this newspaper project, we would like to inform and creative other students about what they can do and possibly help them have the careers they want for the future generations.

Real World Skills I’ve Learned:

There skills that I have learned through this process are communicating about business because we call and e-mail local newspapers, such as the Washington Examiner. I learned a little more about deep researching because I got to look up different types of newspapers throughout the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. Lastly, I learned about cooperating with other students for a long time, because I have only worked with other students for just a short amount of time, but with this group it takes days, weeks, and even a month to finish this astonishing project. I can use these skills outside the classroom to possibly do a project on my own, with people that are willing to help me accomplish my goal, and people that specialize in what I’m trying to do.

Challenges We/I Encountered:

Three challenges we encountered were trying to find out what to say to the editor when we wanted to contact one, we were struggling on being as formal as possible with our messages, as it seems to be our first time writing to a newspaper editor. Second, we had problems with being on task. Sometimes we sort of “drifted off into the wind” of some sorts and we couldn’t focus at times. Lastly, we were kind of nervous that we would get a rejection from a call or from e-mail, which is why we tried to be as formal as possible with our messages and phone calls.

Solutions we tried out:

For our first challenge, we were trying to be formal, but at the same time we were honest, we knew that we would get a rejection if we were lying, we knew that if we lied, the e-mail and calls that we made would be considered spam. Second, we would each tell each other to be focused when one of us isn’t on task. It really helps us out and got us motivated on getting this project done. Lastly, we would just tell each other and tell ourselves in our minds that we should keep calm because even then we might be rejected, it is unlikely and we would have other people to contact even if we do get rejected.

Next Steps:

We have already received an e-mail, and we are trying to get the person who replied to mentor us with our writing skills so we can publish our newspaper. We are still going to be sending e-mails to others. We believe that we need as much support as possible to make this project succeed. This project can’t be just done overnight! We need to get help from teachers, editors, and even fellow students to make this project be possible, let alone succeed.

Favorite Part of the Process:

It’s ironic that my favorite part of this is the reflection! I like how we feel like we can make our community better, and inform others about what’s going on. I like how my partners and I have a lot of teamwork to get this project done. We felt kind of nervous at first, but now we are more motivated in making this informative and entertaining newspaper. We enjoy our time working on this project and when we contact people we feel good because we are confident that we can get not only a reply, but a good and helpful reply. We look forward to contacting more people and getting replies. I also really like this project because I feel I’m doing something that can have an impact to a lot of people in this community, not just students from our class. I really like the process of this project, and I look forward to finally editing this newspaper and make tests go higher and people happier!