Teacher April Kincaid helps a student with classwork – Photos by Marissa Campbell

DEARBORN — Young minds are encouraged to grow, develop and create in the young journalists program taught to eighth graders at Unis Middle School – the only program of its kind in the Dearborn School District. 

April Kincaid, who teaches the program, had a class start a project a few years ago called “The Living Textbook.” According to Joe Grimm, co-director, along with Emilia Askari, of the young journalists program, students, “wrote news stories about their school and their community.” 

The project was funded by grants given to the Asian American Journalists Association from the Ford Foundation and the McCormick Foundation in 2010. 

In essence, the program was designed “to give a voice to middle school students in Dearborn,” Grimm said. 

The Living Textbook, which incorporated a news blog, ran for roughly three years and the online articles can still be found at livingtextbook.aaja.org. 

After the grant ended, Kincaid decided to continue teaching students the art of journalism. Grimm visits Unis Middle School at least once a month to help her with the class. 

“April Kincaid loves to teach journalism so much,” Grimm said. “And it’s such a good way for students to learn how to report and write and think and ask questions that we just keep doing it. And now they make videos, they write opinion pieces, they take pictures, they do all the kinds of things that journalists like to do.”

Kincaid added that the class started a new news blog. 

“After the grant stopped, we eventually stopped putting stories on the Living Textbook site and started our own news blog,” she said.

Students are responsible for finishing stories for the blog once every three weeks. The in-use news blog can be found at iblog.dearbornschools.org/journalism.

Students write about events that pertain to the school, community and even national and international affairs. 

“The criteria for choosing stories are they must all have an angle that relates to our school community,” Kincaid said.

Amira Said works on a blog post idea.

The class also puts out a newsletter at the beginning of each month. The newsletter goes out to students, teachers and parents and is home to human-interest stories that eight middle school columnists write. 

“We write small stories,” said Amira Said, an editor for both the blog and newsletter. “We do things around the school like charity events, and we have a calendar.”

Kincaid pointed out that students must have one expert source for each article they write. These experts have included heart surgeons, superintendents, psychologists and even President Obama. 

After Leila Farhat, who writes news stories for the blog and newsletter, sent an e-mail to the White House in October for an article she was writing about raising the federal minimum wage, she was surprised to receive a reply. 

“I was excited – I didn’t think I would actually get a response,” Farhat said. “I just thought I would try, and I did.”

Sometimes the class takes field trips and students then write about their experiences. One of the most recent field trips was to Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills. 

“We go on specialized field trips,” said Jaafar Chahrour, editor and writer for the blog. “And we get our own bus and it’s just our class. It was really fun there. The museum and the artifacts were really, really amazing, so I felt that I had to do a story on it; and I have many pictures of them.”

The class is not necessarily open to anyone.
Grimm said there is an application process involved and that roughly 30 students are in the class each year.

Kincaid added that commitment is key to finding success in the course. Once a student is in the class, they cannot get out, she said. 

“This group of students is very professional,” Grimm said. “When we ask them what they want to do, we get a lot of people who want to be lawyers, they want to be doctors, they want to be engineers, but almost all of them also love to write.” 

Kincaid added that the students’ maturity gives a voice that is not often heard.

“We realized how vital it is to hear current issues from a young perspective,” she said. “We were all surprised with how the youth had a mature voice that added insight to relevant events from a different angle.”

Grimm mentioned how the unique perspective of Arab Americans is valuable to the community at large as well.

“I think it’s important for the Arab and Muslim communities to raise up some journalists so their stories aren’t always being told by non-Arabs and non-Muslims.” 

As Farhat put it, journalism is a field where disseminating news to the public is a top priority. 

“My favorite thing about the class is being able to write about things that are important to me and having other people be able to read about it,” she said.