At Spanish River High School in Boca Raton, Florida, young artists, graphic designers, writers and photographers are beginning their path for success. Lauren Horniker, a Creative Writing teacher at Spanish River continued the school’s 25 year tradition on designing and publishing a magazine called “Pieces of Eight.” This magazine is a collaboration of student’s photography, artwork and poetry. Ms. Horniker had over 100 poetry submissions and selected the 25 best. Nicole Walker, a student at Spanish River designed the entire magazine using student’s photos, artwork and poetry. When Nicole started this assignment, she knew very little about InDesign but because she was passionate about the success of the magazine, she learned the necessary steps and functions to accomplish the tasks. I had the opportunity to work with Nicole on a few production tasks to get the file ready to be printed. Overall, I was impressed with her interest in wanting to learn about graphic design, her skills she already knew about design and the challenge she took to complete such a large task.
Last night, I attended the debut/award ceremony for the magazine and had the chance to meet the very talented poets, photographers and other artists and their parents. The magazine that Ms. Horniker published taught students a lot about writing, designing, time management, team building and many other important skills that these students will take with them as they move forward on their path for success.
