We’ve made no secret of our admiration for the reporters and editors at the Jackson-Reed High School Beacon, for shining a light on issues and perspectives that grownups don’t often hear about, if at all.
We also tip our hat to the young reporters of the Murch Blue and Gold. The fourth and fifth graders who published the June 2023 edition followed a decade-long tradition. The first newspaper rolled off the presses (it was in print!) in June 2013.
This edition considers such weighty topics as book bans and artificial intelligence. It also tackles the more typical grade school gossip about teachers’ lives before they were teachers. (We mean, who doesn’t want to know?) And, the 2023 newspaper is a retrospective of the kids’ work over past decade. The Blue and Gold’s consistency and longevity is “a rare, if not unique, achievement among the nation’s public elementary schools.” And that’s worth celebrating.
We’ll be sharing some of the 2023 Blue and Gold staff’s hard work next week. But first, here’s the newspaper’s own look back at its first decade.
Highlights of a Decade of Our Student Newspaper
It was a momentous time for the many kid journalists of The Blue and Gold from 2013 to now — as you can see from the sampling below of their memorable year-by-year contributions:
2013
Principal Chris Cebrzynski (Mr. C), interviewed for the first issue of the student newspaper, confessed that his least favorite subject as a kid was math. “It was just too boring. And I didn’t understand it well,” he said. He also confided that he loved the old Murch building (as it was then) and its neighborhood because “it reminds me a lot of my childhood in Chicago.”
2014
Kid reporters Olivia Roark and Emma Harris dropped in on children’s book author Erica Perl, who said she often tested her work by reading aloud to kids. “If they don’t like what I’ve written, I’m going to find out. They’re not going to hide it.”
Two staffers named Olivia wrote the first poems to be published in The Blue and Gold. “Different,” by Olivia Wood, included this verse: “From unnoticed creatures/To people of fame/Everyone is different/No one is the same.” Olivia Roark’s verse about bullying began: “I never thought I’d go to war/at such a youthful age/But here and now I find myself/completely, totally enraged.”
2015
Lucy Chamberlain and Tessa Furlow, eager to express their opinions, wrote the B&G’s first editorial. It pinpointed the weaknesses of the Murch trailers (anyone remember those?) and proposed practical ideas for “making the trailer classrooms safer, more sanitary and better for concentrating on learning.”
The entire B&G staff met with architect Ronnie McGhee about his design team’s vision for the Murch modernization project, expected to cost an estimated $65 million (which turned out to be low by millions). “I can’t say that it will look like any of the other (DC) schools,” McGhee said.
In a personal column, Tessa Furlow nominated herself to be Murch’s No. 1 medical patient during school hours. “I’m pretty sure I went there (the nurse’s office) at least 20 times, more than any other kid, I think,” she wrote. “I kept getting stomach aches. My stomach always hurt in math class. If I have to have a stomach ache, I’d rather have it during math, especially when we’re dividing fractions.”
And Maia Bester drew the newspaper’s first cartoon, which commented on the worldwide craze of taking self-portraits with a hand-held phone. Maia drew a girl posing for her phone-camera and saying, “Never mind the unicorn. I’m busy taking selfies.” Indeed, peering into the frame from the right was a unicorn, who moaned to himself, “I used to be a star.”
2016
Maia Bester and Lucy Chamberlain combined to turn in a profile of then-Assistant Principal Penelope Miller. They learned that Ms. Miller grew up as a country girl in a rural part of Washington State. “She was an only child but had 15 ducks, a dog and two cats — not to mention a wild raccoon living in her backyard,” the girls reported.
Lily Shaw reviewed “Welcome to Mars,” a fact-laden book co-authored by former astronaut Buzz Aldrin. At the end of her review, Lily asked: “So is it possible to live on Mars?” Her answer: “Yes, it is.”
Mary Louisa Leopold reported on the plan to move our school temporarily to the University of the District of Columbia campus “while the overcrowded 86-yer-old Murch building gets a multimillion-dollar facelift.” Headline: “Murch Goes to College.”
In a separate article, Mary Louisa, on the verge of graduation, expressed fond memories of the school she knew intimately for six years. “This school was like a home for me,” she wrote. “Murch made me feel as if I had a name and an opinion that mattered to others.”
And for the first time, The Blue and Gold ventured into fiction. The idea came to Editor Aaron Epstein while he was tutoring 3rd-grader Adrian Belmonte in reading and writing. Mr. Epstein discovered that Adrian was fascinated by Leonardo da Vinci and tales of time travel, and suggested that Adrian merge those interests into a short story. For months, Adrian worked on a first draft and rewrites.
The result: “The Strange Case of the Stolen Mona Lisa” appeared on pages 3 and 5 of the June issue. A 5th-grader, Tavaline (Beaver) Inthavone contributed a twisted tale of Cinderella and a detective story that began with the theft of iPads at Murch.
And there was Maia Bester’s lengthy narrative poem of a nocturnal adventure that began when “I clamber out of my bedroom window/Careful not to wake my father/And listen to the sounds of the night around me/I can hear the chirping of crickets/Feel the beautiful nature/Taste the wind/Touch the moon/Out here I can be anything/Anyone.”
2017
An opinion column by 5th-graders Lila Chesser and Rachel Kolko concluded that gender bias lingered at Murch. They cited evidence that “reinforce the stereotype that girls are weaker and less athletic than boys.” They cited an instance, for example, in which a substitute gym teacher introduced a game of kickball with hockey sticks. “I don’t think the girls can do it,” the sub said.
Third-grader Iain Walter introduced his Mr. Mustang comic strip with a student’s surprising discovery that the central character was a clerk in the main office. “What, never seen a horse type with hooves?” Mr. Mustang exclaimed.
2018
Bea Marchesani and Maia Riggs donned hard hats and protective glasses to explore the construction site and tell Murch kids and adults what they would find when the $83 million modern Murch opens.
In another Iain Walter comic strip, a downhearted Mr. Mustang appeared at the construction site, wailing, “What? NO STABLE?!”
The June issue featured a boxed front-page story by Lorelei McIntosh and Margaux Colleye, who made this announcement: “Finally, after 85 years of use, several years of battling over design and budget, and two years of construction, a Murch Elementary School for the 21st century is about to open.”
But Mr. Mustang refused to leave Murch’s temporary site on the UDC campus. Why? “I did so well on PARCC, I got accepted into UDC,” the Murch mascot explained.
And Bea, about to graduate and assigned to recall her standout memory of Murch, wrote: “A boy in my kindergarten class proposed to me one day. He said that if I didn’t accept his offer of marriage, he would cut his head off and put himself in prison. I didn’t believe him. I declined, even when he begged me. The boy isn’t at Murch any more. As far as I know, he’s still alive, not married and not in prison.”
2019
Lucy Spellacy-Baah investigated the ways in which classroom pets help kids learn. She found that pets make kids excited about school, teach them to enjoy — and care for — living things, and acquaint them with grief. When a fish died in a 1st-grade classroom, the teacher taught the class about the process of life and death. “The kids found a nice spot out in the garden. Together, they buried the fish,” Lucy reported. “Then they made a gravesite by wrapping straw with duct tape and placing berries around it.’
2020 and 2021
When the coronavirus forced schools to close and confined students to their homes, The Blue and Gold published a unique edition titled “The Pandemic Diaries.” B&G reporters and alumni volunteered to write journals, telling readers of their loneliness, the absence of friends, the difficulties of distance learning, their frustrations and boredom, and their worries about the future.
Yet their diary entries also showed their hopes, discoveries of new interests, and love for parents, siblings and pets. A retired Murch teacher praised the published diaries as “so from the heart.”
A Murch parent wrote that the writings of his son and the other students “helped me understand their state of mind better.”
Read the June 2023 edition of the Murch Blue and Gold here.
Carl Stern says
Your article on the amazing Murch elementary school student newspaper should have give more recognition to the driving force of its indefatigable “”coach,” Aaron Epstein. Epstein, whose resume includes the University of Missouri journalism school and a law degree from the University of the Pacific, was a mainstay of the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain in Washington for a quarter century, as well as previously reporting and editing at the Philadelphia Inquirer and Sacramento Bee. In restless retirement, he became a tutor in neighborhood DC public schools, and turned his attention to guiding fourth and fifth graders with an interest in journalism at Murch where his efforts outshine the work of Horace Greeley and Joseph Pulitzer. Carl Stern, Davenport St. N.W.
FHC says
Agreed! Thanks for providing the background information and the well-deserved recognition.