Niwot High duo starts student newspaper

The International Baccalaureate (IB) Program is typically defined by its accelerated and demanding academic level. But as it touts itself as a "world school," part of the curriculum extends beyond the classroom and asks students to consider community, action and service (CAS) and create a project that brings these aspects together.

IB juniors Sydney Rothstein and Mercer Stauch came together on their project, which has become the school's new student newspaper: The Green and Black.

"We have a lot of students who are very into helping people," explained Rothstein, "and who have a lot of things to say." With this in mind, she approached Stauch and together they pitched the idea to social studies teacher Sarah Demmel, who had looked into starting a paper a year before.

It's hard to say if any one tenet of CAS outshines another--the paper is extremely community-focused. Rothstein and Mercer explained how they reached out to a number of students for help. "We were looking for artists...photographers...authors-wise, we went out and found people passionate about writing and who really wanted to make a difference," Rothstein said. Not only does the staff have a number of students with different interests to contribute to the paper, but it's also composed of upper and lower classmen, so that the paper's legacy can still continue.

As for "action" and "service," the duo is excited about the paper's content: since it's a monthly paper, rather than explicitly covering the who, what, when, etc., of the news, they're focusing on student's perspectives. "At Niwot, students are really politically informed and a lot of our writers wanted to [cover national events]," said Stauch. "Our most successful articles are the ones that relate high school to world events."

But in addition to these high-school-perspective-on-current-event type articles, Staunch and Rothstein are excited to simply give their peers a voice and showcase their skills. For example, there are comics, a humor column, and one student has a recurring column discussing various species native to Colorado. The plan, for now, is to focus on Niwot-specific coverage, but once school's back in session and a few more editions are in the books, the team hopes to expand the paper.

One of those expansions includes a future website. "One of my favorite things is when we have breaking news, one of the functions of the website [will be] to update at a more frequent pace than the issue," Staunch said.

For now, the paper is being distributed via PDF through the high school's newsletter system, but they are working on a site and will announce when it's ready. The goal is for the Green and Black site to be up and running by the end of February. But for community members who want to get connected sooner, they can email gbniwot@gmail.com for access.

"We are very grateful for the students who are part of our project," said Rothstein. "It's Niwot's paper, we [she and Stauch] just run it... We have so many talented people and they're the reason this all works."