Always Living and Learning

I would like to express the great appreciation I have for my journalism class at Grants High School. The class is made up of 22 students who are just finalizing their fourth and final Angry Jack Journal student newspaper edition for the current school year.

This final Angry Jack edition will be an insert in its mother paper, the Cibola Citizen, next Wednesday, May 11. It will include GHS prom coverage; spring sports; `The Little Mermaid’ GHS school drama department production;’ a focus on some senior students set to graduate; various pieces of student seasonal art work; and numerous other articles, essays, poems, and school banter.

There have been GHS student newspapers in the past, but the more recent Angry Jack Journal is currently in its third consecutive year of publication. Journalism is an elective course on the GHS class curriculum. The 2019-20 GHS journalism class selected `Angry Jack Journal’ as the school paper’s name. That journalism class and last year’s class (2020-2021 school year) both put together four solid editions of the Angry Jack – fall and winter editions in the first semester, and two more editions in the second semester.

Kylie Garcia, a current beat writer for the Cibola Citizen, was the Angry Jack Journal’s student editor in its first year (2019- 20) and Ethan Castillo took over the student editor position last year – the bizarre pandemic school year in which the journalism class students did most of their reporting, writing, and photography work from their homes. Somehow, Castillo, who graduated last May, led his fellow journalism class peers in putting out some terrific papers.

This year, sophomore Enlla Delgado Gutierrez was chosen to be the student editor. She, understandably, was a little reluctant at first to accept the position. Like most GHS 10th graders, she had spent most of the previous school year, as a ninth grader, doing classwork virtually from home. So this year, she said, has almost felt like a second freshman year. Enlla was still getting her feet wet as an on-campus high school student this school year and was not certain she wanted to be student editor. But she agreed and has done a terrific job captaining the Angry Jack Journal.

This year’s journalism class is quite similar to the classes of the past two years – a handful of students (4 or 5) who have kind of guided the Angry Jack schooner (led by Gutierrez this year); 10- 15 students who, more or less, have progressed in the journalism world of interviewing and story writing at a slower pace but have ultimately gained more confidence and made key contributions to the publication; and the remainder of the class contributing in various other ways – art work, photography (thank you student photographer Taylor Delgarito), and creative writing.

I have been really fortunate to have outstanding journalism classes these past three school years and the students have, overall, been outstanding. And we at the Angry Jack would be nothing without the guidance and leading of the folks of the Cibola Citizen – Sylvia Anzures Gonzales, G.M./Chief of Staff; Destiny Gallegos, sales; Diego Lopez, reporter; and Kylie Garcia, reporter. Thank you all so much for helping put our student paper together and making it look so good. Lopez, the Citizen’s talented young reporter, has come to speak to our journalism classes each of the past two years and has been a hit with the students. Also thanks to former Citizen Editor Scott Ford, who was so open to helping our school and journalism class kick-start a paper with the Citizen’s backing in 2019.