Ms. Norah Doss is a new eighth grade English teacher here at Academy and has created a unique, engaging project for her students to get them excited about literature. She first had her students work on personal creative writing projects for two weeks earlier in February. They wrote 10 to 15 different pieces and once completed, they picked their favorite ones, picked a theme and then created a “zine.” Zines are small magazines composed of self made work that are mainly self published. They commonly include pictures and images to accompany the written pieces. Doss created this project because she wanted students to be engaged in their writing and show them that it is fun to write. Each zine featured two pieces of art inspired by their writing.

The kids in her class loved this project. Ruby ‘27 chose ‘life’ as her theme and had amazing art work to go with her writing. Everyone had different themes from silliness to complete randomness. Most kids said that the hardest part of this project for them was the art work, but it was also their favorite part! Having other aspects of work included in the writing process seemed to be overall really enjoyable. Coming up in Ms. Doss’ English class, students will read The Odyssey, pick any character to write from their perspective, and then dress up as this character and have a dinner party! We are excited to see all the new creative projects Ms. Doss has in store for her class!