22 MAY 2025 By Amanda Goossen In the fall of 2021, a group of fifth grade girls, who had – only months before – been my fourth-grade students, entered the classroom, whispering and looking hesitant. After a moment, the boldest of the group cleared her throat and asked a question that would bring great joy to my week for the next four years. “Mrs. Goossen,” she said, “will you please help us restart the school newspaper?” As a former editor and journalist, I had worked with students at St. Thomas the Apostle as a volunteer since 2015, before I was a teacher. Our junior high students had worked on articles and published two newspapers a year for five years, but then it shut down. And I thought it was forever, until these 10-year-old girls began their pitch. They had a plan, had ideas, and promised, whether they really understood their promise or not, that they would do all the work. I would just have to be the teacher in the room, moderating the club. That part wasn’t true. Not at first anyway. Today, these girls are a powerhouse. They became a team that I’m so proud to know and learn from. As they begin to wrap up their eighth-grade year and move on to high school, there are newspaper club meetings where I’m brought to tears, watching how much they’ve grown. The first two years this team worked together to run the Mustang News, they wrote articles, and we discussed repeatedly what it meant to check work, how to have journalistic integrity and why it was important to get things right. It was a slow-moving process. They were young, without knowledge that – let’s face it – many adults don’t possess. There were weeks when I questioned what we were doing and if the process was worth it. Then, we made one of the girls the editor. While shy at first, she began leading meetings, demanding deadlines to be met and asking for my input on how to best approach a student who needed to completely rewrite an article. That Mustang News editor is now 14, leading students ages 10-14. She’s a grammar wiz and skilled writer. She is thoughtful in everything she does. The other five became section editors. They rallied students to join the club and spent the past year training them to take over positions. They shout across the classroom to the different teams, while looking at the shared Google doc, marking off who has outstanding articles, who is missing photos and asking why someone messed up the newspaper layout again. I laugh with my fellow teachers, proudly sharing that the classroom sounds like an old school newsroom, with eighth graders shouting, “who changed that word” and “send over the photos” as others scramble around trying to locate files and interviews. They are patiently teaching the younger team, asking “who needs help” or “let me show you.” I’ve watched one of our section editors encourage a fifth grader to run her team for the day, partly because she was overloaded with the layout process, but also because she feels she could replace her next year, and wanted to see how she would do. Her generosity, kindness and maturity blew me away. These girls are my proudest moment as a teacher. Liv, Lauren, Olivia, Lucia, Susanna and Aliyah: each of you are a force to be reckoned with. I always knew you were smart, honest, kind and hardworking students, and watching you grow into strong, powerful young women who are brave enough to ask for what you want, and willing to do the work to get there, is a beautiful thing to witness. Thank you for creating the Mustang News. A paper you built. A team you created. And a dream you brought to reality. The STA student newspaper team. PHOTO: AMANDA GOOSSEN Mustang News team passes the torch

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