The voice of youth: the peculiarities of running a school newspaper through the perspective of Yerkezhan Sakhiyeva

It is commonly suggested that students in high school should pursue an extracurricular activity/passion project. While joining an already created club seems like a safe choice for many, other passionate students were brave enough to decide to start their projects. Our today's guest Erko (Yerkezhan) Sakhiyeva is a recent Haileybury Almaty graduate, who will kindly tell us more about her passion project called "The Haileybury Gazette". Besides her academic achievements, Erko is also well-known for her artistic and, overall, shiny personality.

In this interview Erko will talk about the idea behind "The Haileybury Gazette", as well as share her own perspective on the common issues that may arouse when starting a project of your passion, such as: utilizing time and technical requirements, finding compromises within the team, being bold and committed to your values.

- These days, it might seem like gazettes/magazines start losing their popularity amongst teenagers. How did you come up with the idea of creating your school gazette, considering the aforesaid trend? Also, could you briefly describe the process of creating the "Haileybury Gazette"?

- My goal has always been to impact positively on the world around me. In ensuring a happy and active community, as a school should be, I value transparency and informativeness. The pillars of the Haileybury Gazette are sharing and exchanging ideas and knowledge and engaging everyone affiliated with a school. It acts as a bridge between students aged 5 to 19, teachers, staff, and parents. As a tool, it is there to serve them but does not mandate anyone to stay there constantly.

-Creating the gazette started with the idea. Then, I went on to my Housemaster (head of the house that I am in, Bartle Frere (the best one FYI), out of four at Haileybury), to ask for advice on how I can get it up and running. I was referred to some administration representatives, filled out a few forms managing expectations, goals, processes, etc. Then the gazette was announced at school, and people applied for team positions. The rest is history.

- Working on publishing gazettes can be considered a highly responsible extracurricular activity. Therefore, we would like to ask approximately how many hours a week you spend working on "Haileybury Gazette"? 

- It varied greatly, averaging around 12 hours per week. But there were also times I would spend around 4 hours per day!

- Based on your experience, what are the technical requirements (number of team members, gadgets, publishing resources, etc.) for starting a school gazette?

- It depends on the size of the school and how committed, dedicated, and productive the members are. I was lucky, and I am very grateful to my amazing team members and the school for supporting me greatly in such an inspiring enterprise. We have around 10 members now. We all used our laptops and/or computers at the school. Regarding publishing, I made the call of making the gazette digital -- it is more sustainable and convenient this way.

- What challenges did you face while creating your editorial team?

- The deadlines were challenging (laughs). Since the editorial team varies in our age, profile subject choices, and working habits, it took effort on standardizing the system while keeping creative and productive freedom for all.

- While going through your publications, we were pleased to see the diversity in the topics covered: health, STEM, ecology, and especially your creative section called "Nourish to flourish". How do you discover the ideas for the new edition of your gazette: through the feedback/recommendations from your readers or through the cooperation amongst your editorial team?

- Both! We try to cover what is relevant at the time. The sections you mentioned, we call them "umbrellas" (or columns), stay constant. The topics covered under each "umbrella" depends on the overall theme chosen for the issue. Everything is brainstormed within the team.

- For example, one of the issue's theme was Unity. We talked about what we could cover under the topic and some of the ideas were unity in society against prejudice, stigma, and hate (article on the importance of trans visibility) and unity between people and technology (article about the coexistence of artificial intelligence and humans).

- Some students might hesitate to start a school gazette due to the fear of pressure from the school administration that might limit editors' freedom of speech and, consequently, affect the authenticity of the material. Have you ever experienced similar challenges? If not, as a head editor, what would you do if this problem occurred?

- Yes. The youngsters' voices always have a distinctive ring to it -- the change. One needs to be bold when expressing, sharing, and informing. That is what you do as a gazette -- you cover issues of importance and take responsibility for it.

As long as you believe in the values of your publication, you can handle anything. 

- Last but not least, what advice would you give to the students from other schools that are considering starting their own school gazette?

- Be authentic! Listen, to your team, to your audience, to the world, to yourself. Speak up for what is important. Expand, continuously. Inspire. Encourage. Be brave. 

 "The Haileybury Gazette" covers a lot of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) related topics of current interest. As a publishing team ourselves, we highly suggest reading their latest issue (https://www.haileybury.kz/ru/almaty/news/11th-edition-of-the-haileybury-gazette) to broaden your horizons and gain new perspectives in this constantly developing world.

So, what do you think about this interview and Erko's story? If you liked it, you can always share it with your friends through your Instagram story and leave your comments on our page. Also tell us, what new topics you want us to cover. Your feedback is highly important for us)))