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Middle Schoolers Gain Voice Via Social Media

Middle Schoolers Gain Voice Via Social Media thumbnail109332

A “student social media takeover” has brought excitement and new levels of leadership to the middle school. Beginning late last year, students applied to run the school’s social media accounts for the day in order to showcase student voices and better display the student experience for the school community.

Every two weeks, a different student was selected, taking and posting four to six photos each. The students sent the photos and accompanying captions to administrators for posting to Instagram, which is set up to automatically repost to the school’s Facebook and Twitter pages.

“It was different from a regular day of school because we got to take pictures, although it was hard to choose the photos and write the captions,” said sixth-grader Patrick O’Shea.

Not only did the students involved enjoy the experience, the reaction from classmates and teachers was enthusiastic.

“They were all super excited and asking me to put them in a picture,” said seventh-grader Gabriella Dirosse. “They all wanted to participate, which I thought was really cool, that we all could be a part of it together. The students had their voice, the teachers had their voice, and we all had different opinions.” 

“For us, it really connects to everything we are trying to do with giving our students a voice and helping them become leaders,” said Assistant Principal Bryan Miltenberg. “If you look at the news, it always seems to be negative in terms of kids and social media, and we wanted to flip that narrative and show that social media can be used for positive. We wanted our community to see what coming to school here is like through the eyes of the students.”