Posted May 7, 2012

Top: 2012 edition of Visions. Bottom: Students from Shaker High School and Blue Creek read their pieces aloud to the audience.

Visions, the literary magazine run by Shaker High School students, held its 2012 Release Party last week in front of an audience of parents, friends and district staff.

Visions is a literary magazine run by students, along with the supervision of advisors Hope Dils and Maureen Livingston. It provides an opportunity for students to artistically express themselves using written and visual mediums. Members of the club create, edit, and select submissions for publication and generate the layout for the magazine.

View photo gallery from Release Party

Coming off a year in which Visions received a ranking of “Superior” by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), the Visions’ staff was excited and hopeful that this edition would rival their production from 2011.

A total of 391 schools from across the country entered the 2011 NCTE program to Recognize Excellence in Student Literary Magazines, and Shaker High School was the only district in the region to receive a “Superior” ranking.

The high school students were also accompanied by their younger colleagues from Blue Creek Elementary. Over the last few weeks, the high school students spent time working with their elementary “buddies” to select excerpts from their creative writing pieces and to practicing reading these aloud to an audience. At the release party, the Blue Creek students debuted their pieces in front of the audience to much fanfare.

The students who work on the magazine get involved for many reasons, ranging from creative expression to honing their design skills. However, one thing they can all agree on is that working on this publication is something that is very special to them.

“I like looking at all of the different artwork submissions,” junior Kelley Bullock said. “I like finding the different aspects of art and writing and paring them together.”

“Mrs. Dils would talk about Visions in class and it really appealed to me,” senior Shai Hacker said. “I like to write to express my creativity. Being a part of this magazine is something I’ll always remember.”