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All the Views
Fit to Print
By Sam Swope
Teacher Magazine - May/June 2002
While many 'teen' publications claim to speak for their readers, one lets readers
speak for themselves. Founded 13 years ago, Teen Ink magazine has, thus far,
printed the works of 25,000 students nationwide.
Click to download the pdf of this article
I'm a writer who teaches. Over the years, I've taught writing to
teachers and students at every grade level, and experience has made me a believer
in the importance of publishing student work.
So when I first heard
about Teen Ink, a nationally distributed, general-interest magazine that features
writing by teenagers, I was intrigued but also a bit suspicious.
On the
one hand, the idea behind Teen Ink was exciting. On the other hand, I'd been
burned too many times, encouraging my students to submit to publications only to
find that the so-called publishers were fraudulent, charging a fee to read
submissions or "accepting" pieces and then asking the kids to shell out big bucks
for a copy of the book in which they would appear.
So I decided, earlier
this year, to pay Teen Ink's offices a visit and see what was
what.
Because Teen Ink also has published a successful series of books
featuring the magazine's best pieces, I smelled money and expected to find the
chief executive set up in a cushy corporate office, mouthing platitudes about
education. But when I arrived, in January, at a modest brick building overlooking
the commuter railway in Newton, Massachusetts, I wondered if I had the wrong
address.
John and Stephanie Meyer welcomed me and introduced me to their
staff. The big news that morning was that 400 submissions of essays, poems, and
stories had come in through the website in one day. The staff was
thrilled, a reaction I found remarkable. I'm a devoted teacher, but the prospect
of reading 400 pieces by teens (not to mention the 40,000 submissions Teen Ink
receives on average each year) is my idea of hell.
"You can't possibly
read them all," I said, but everyone assured me they did. And when I asked, "How
can you stand it?" Stephanie laughed and told me, "What keeps me going is knowing
that somewhere in the slush, there's sure to be an amazing piece of writing by
some kid who's never had anything published before, and that getting it into the
world is going to make a difference." That made sense. No one could do this work
unless they felt they were on a mission. Not without going insane.
The
Meyers' mission began in 1989, when their own two children were teenagers. They'd
been lucky: Both kids were excellent students. As a result, they received lots of
attention from their teachers. Most parents would be pleased and leave it at
that, but the Meyers worried about their kids' friends and classmates who weren't
such high achievers, the ordinary, run-of-the-mill kids who didn't get noticed at
school.
As they discussed what they could do to help, the idea for a
magazine was probably inevitable. John worked in publishing, putting out an
insurance-industry magazine, and Stephanie worked as a teacher. Wouldn't it be
great, they thought, if students could send their writing to someone who didn't
know anything about them, someone who wasn't going to mark up their words with a
red pen or give them a grade. Someone who would read pieces without
preconceptions.
"Besides," Stephanie told me, "there are so many glossy
magazines out there aimed at kids, magazines that tell them how to think and what
to feel and what to wear and buy, that we thought there needed to be other
voices, teen voices, that would offer kids a different viewpoint, a kid's
viewpoint!"
So the Meyers made the leap. They quit their jobs, took out
personal loans, set up a foundation, and turned their basement into an office.
The first step was to mail letters to families in the Boston area, asking kids to
submit articles. Then they waited, wondering if anyone would respond. To their
delight, within weeks they had enough material for a first issue, and the
submissions just kept coming. Over the next several years, what they were then
calling The 21st Century grew from a local magazine to one distributed throughout
New England. In 1998, the Meyers went national then later changed the name to
Teen Ink.
The failure rate of magazines is staggering, and that Teen Ink
has not just survived but grown is a testament to quality as well as a careful
marshaling of modest means. Today, about 5,000 teachers in 50 states have
classroom subscriptions, receiving 30 copies of the latest issue at the beginning
of each month. (There are 10 issues a year.) But half of the subscriptions are
either completely free or close to it, with hard-strapped teachers paying
whatever they can toward the suggested annual price of $97. Even teachers who pay
the full amount are getting a bargain - it costs Teen Ink more than that just to
mail the magazines. John told me, "We've never wanted teachers not to receive
Teen Ink just because of a lack of money."
Where, then, does the rest of
the money come from? Some of it, John explained, is supplied by the proceeds of
their successful book series (four so far, with more than 180,000 sold) and some
from foundation grants. But most of it is ad revenue.
Teen Ink is printed
on newsprint and each issue runs about 50 pages. Most pieces are several hundred
words long and the longest, 2,600. The writers come from every region the
country, rural and urban, and there's something for every interest - opinion
pieces, stories, poems, and articles on sports, politics, family, relationships
and more.
Here's what I found in a randomly chosen issue, November 2001.
At the front of the magazine is "Feedback," Teen Ink's letters-to the-editor
section. In this issue, kids respond briefly to past articles, and some thank
Teen Ink for existing. In the main body of the magazine, there's lots of
nonfiction. Hannan Chaudhry from Sacramento, California, writes an essay in favor
of cloning. Sarah Porter of Balch Springs, Texas, weighs in with a piece on sleep
deprivation. Jonathan Legan, a resident of Fairbanks, Alaska, describes his
family's 60-mile trek on a snowmobile to have Thanksgiving dinner with friends
("we came across some obstacles, including a moose and broken ice on the river,
but we managed to bypass these"). Chris Pettey of Sloansville, New York,
contributes a cautionary essay about a friend who took a tab of Ecstasy and wound
up in the hospital, and Chris Mercer from Lincolnwood, IL, writes about the
world's water crisis.
There are five short stories and 25 poems, one of
which, by Mairead Case of Bellevue, Washington, particularly caught my
eye:
I just fell in love with languge,
says the poet,
pausing
between sips of perrier-and-lime,
as if he and
language
shared a table, red wine,
and an orange
sunset.
imagine him falling for words like
peridot, hydrangea,
cacao.
at night, turning the tv on mute so
he can read the
closed-captioning.
at the zoo, mumbling
latin in the primate
house
"leontopithecus rosalid rosalia"
(golden-haired lion
tamarind)
and mornings, laughing
over the box of froot
loops:
"marshmallow-blasted lemon, lime,
and orange!"
Books
reviewed include Snow Falling on Cedars ("haunting"), Anne of Avonlea ("a must
read") and The Three Musketeers ("if there is one negative, it would be the
romance"). An *N SYNC concert is reviewed, and the band "surprised many fans with
heavy drums and bass, reflecting their urban, more mature sound." Another critic
gives a thumbs up to Bob Dylan's "Love and Theft." Among the movies reviewed are
"The African Queen" ("ancient" but a break from "modern movies with their
hackneyed plots") and Bandits ("the film is immensely entertaining, but as far as
morals go, you have to stop and wonder").
Each month the magazine features
several college essays and another regular section is devoted to reports by
juniors on colleges they've toured. November's issue includes Bates ("it
surprised me that Bates does not require standardized tests for admission, and so
SATs are not required") and the US. Naval Academy ("I was stunned by the splendor
of the Academy").
There's more, lots more - 140 pieces in all. I haven't
even mentioned all the teen photography and artwork or the outraged essay, titled
"I Am Arabic, I Have Nothing to Hide," by Jamie Domunes of Milton, Massachusetts,
which concludes: "Two months ago I was an average teenager worried about what I
was going to wear Friday night ... Although many do not see the Arab in me, I can
feel it every time I hear someone who is angry say, 'Send all the Arabs back
where they came from.' Well, I am one of those Arabs and the United States of
America is where I am from - and where I belong."
In evaluating the
magazine, I was of several minds. As a teacher, I immediately saw Teen Ink's
value. Here was an organization that listens to what teenagers have to say, gives
them a much-needed place to publish, offers models for kids in many genres, and
provides a real-life application for the writing skills I try to teach. Teen Ink
also gives kids a reason to write for someone other than a teacher.
As a
writer, I found most of the pieces good, some merely okay, and a few excellent,
worthy of publication anywhere. But because Teen Ink is distributed nationally,
it's fair to ask if mostly good is good enough. Shouldn't the magazine be held to
the highest standards, publishing only the finest writing by teenagers
today?
I put this question to John Meyer, who said: "There's a wide
variety of students in the middle and they are struggling to reach their
potential, too. They also need some recognition, some attention, some
encouragement. Our goal is to give as many students a chance to be published for
the first time and, at the same time, balance that with the need to have Teen Ink
be as good a publication as it can be.
"We want every student who reads
Teen Ink to understand that they, too, have a chance to be published. There are
many students from the lowest academic levels who have some of the most
insightful and creative stories to tell, so we certainly want to give them a
chance to be heard."
Teen Ink offers a lot of interesting writing ideas,
and the Educator of the Year contest is one of my favorites. When kids write
essays nominating a teacher, coach, guidance counselor, librarian, or principal,
their subjects have a shot at being one of 200 educators who win either a $250 or
a $100 award.
My other favorite Teen Ink writing idea is an interview. In
order to encourage kids to find out about the lives and histories of
grandparents, parents, neighbors, businesspeople, teachers, and friends - anybody
who interests them - Teen Ink not only publishes interviews, but those kids who
do a bang-up job have a shot at sitting down with a celebrity. So far, lucky
teenagers have conducted interviews with then-first lady Hillary Clinton, Sen.
John Glenn, Jesse Jackson, George Lucas, and R.L. Stine, among others. During a
recent session with Whoopi Goldberg, who'd agreed to spend 40 minutes with the
kids, the comedienne was so impressed she stayed for an hour and a
half.
John Meyer told me: "In most cases, these interviews are pretty darn
thoughtful. We're not just talking about their celebrity status and the kind of
thing you see in a glossy magazine. The kids are asking substantive questions
that relate to teenagers and getting through the teen years and asking advice
from these celebrities who relate it to their own experiences."
Because of
their attention to the quality of the writing and the sensitivity of the content,
Teen Ink has gained the trust of thousands of teachers. And without that trust,
Teen Ink wouldn't be able to touch the lives of the 25,000 kids they've
published, not to mention hundreds of thousands of readers. John and Stephanie
Meyer hope to reach many more kids."
In the end, I can't think of a single
reason why a teacher shouldn't subscribe: Teen Ink is one of the most valuable
educational publications in America today. Although it has an obvious home in the
classroom, Teen Ink should be seen elsewhere - in libraries, guidance offices,
even cafeterias. And if teachers don't have room for it in their curriculum, they
could hand out copies to kids as they walk in or out the door, and let the
magazine find its natural audience. In at least one school, students pay for Teen
Ink themselves, and Kathy Thames, a teacher in Brookhaven, Mississippi, told me,
"I would not, could not teach without it, and I continue to pay for it each year
out of my own pocketbook."
Teen Ink is not for everyone. Not all students
are going to read it. But some, and perhaps many, will. And who knows where that
will lead? I heard a number of stories, large and small, about how the magazine
has made a difference in kids' lives, but my favorite was one Stephanie Meyer
told me. After Teen Ink had published a piece by a boy, a girl from another state
wrote a response. That response was published, and the boy responded to the
response. Soon, the kids became pen pals, writing to each other directly. Their
correspondence lasted a year, and finally, they decided to meet. In the end - cue
the violins - they wound up engaged.
Excerpted from Teacher magazine,
May 2002
Sam Swope is the author of The Araboolies of Liberty Street and
other books for children. He lives in New York City and conducts workshops for
students and teachers across the country.
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