At my school we have a simple Lit Mag (Literature Magazine) that is published at the end of the year. It is around 60 pages and the size is about 5″x8″. This past year there was some trouble getting people to submit work. This is a little bit weird because every student writes tons of pieces for their english classes. I thought I would take a go at rethinking the Lit Mag and share with you what I came up.

This has been inspired by Christian Long’s call for ideas as he returns to the classroom as an English teacher that has been put in charge of the Lit Mag. Along with a friend of mine who will be taking over the Lit Mag next year.

I believe that it is still important to publish the traditional Lit Mag as a paper booklet at the end of the year. Why? Because reading something on paper is awesome and has a certain feeling about it. Plus, when a student sees there work printed instead of on the screen it is completely different.

A monthly Lit Mag that could be published online would make sense. Here people from anywhere in the world could leave comments and suggestions, never mind fellow classmates and the school’s english teachers. I think that students would love to receive comments on their work from people they don’t know, this would mix it up for them. This monthly Lit Mag could also be made available as a 8.5 x 11 PDF file that people could download and print off.

To add even more value to the whole concept of putting a Lit Mag online, why not create and develop a network of Lit Mags that are published online. This would be much like a blogging network that has blogs that focus on specific topics. This would result in bringing people who care about literature together and would give people that aren’t so much into literature a great starting point.

It is vital to get students involved and participating. They need to care about it. The students who like to write will most likely participate, but what about the people that don’t like to write. Just because they don’t like to write doesn’t mean that their writing is bad and unworthy of being in the Lit Mag. It would be a good idea to build participation of the Lit Mag into the curriculum by requiring that students submit work to it. They are writing pieces for English class anyways, right?

In order to get students, teachers, parents, and the world interested in the Lit Mag it is important to provide more than just prose or poetry pieces. I propose adding a “culture” aspect to the Lit Mag and here’s how. Collect writing pieces from History, Art, and other classes. Have teachers that don’t teach English submit writing pieces about anything they want. This way if a student really loves science and their science teacher puts something in the Lit Mag, they could get interested in English and Literature as well. It is also important to have students explore topics outside of school such as the art, business, political, and entertainment worlds. (the list could go on an on)

Also, invite and encourage people to comment and offer their own thoughts on pieces that are in the Lit Mag. Have an Opinion section where students can express themselves on certain issues. Then ask a question at the end and have people respond online by leaving comments.

That’s all I have for now. If I think of anything else I will update it here. Anything else that you can think of?

While we are on the topic of writing I thought I would bring up a create site that has created a participatory community of writers called Urbis. Solution Watch gave a great review here.

Since, I do do so much writing for school, I have been thinking of putting up a bunch of stuff online either here or on my personal site. What do you think?