True North Youth Program, a nonprofit working in the West End, Norwood and Telluride, is helping students with a variety of projects, from scholarship applications to college readiness, social-emotional wellness and more. Now, the nonprofit is gearing up for its second annual publication of West End youth magazine The San Miguel Current.
The Current features the writings and art of local youth, specifically from Norwood and Nucla high schools. Last year, to support the work, professional journalists George Lewis and Judy Muller gave a workshop at Nucla High School. The pair just returned Nov. 21 for a second time, since the story pitches and art are due by Dec. 13 for this year’s edition.
The recent session was called “How to Hook Your Audience with Compelling Stories: Writing for Print.” They worked inside Ms. (Megan) Urban’s English Language Arts classes, specifically with upperclassmen.
Muller’s brother, the late John Mansfield, was one of the founding board members of True North Youth Program, and executive director Vivian Russell told the Forum she was honored to have the expert journalists giving their talks with students.
She said the collaboration is special, and they’ve assisted high school editor Cadence Shaw with learning different aspects of her job, and they’ve been guides for True North in the greater publishing process.
“They’ve been great supports for The San Miguel Current,” Russell said. “We knew they had this talent, we wanted to bring that into the San Miguel Current, and we brought them into the schools,” she said.
Muller and Lewis are set to go into Norwood High School before the winter break too, on Dec. 5.
“We will do the same things with them,” Muller said.
She’s providing class assignments for teens to do, but she said the real focus is on getting them to understand there are stories all around them.
“Nobody thinks there’s a story that’s interesting where they live,” Muller told the Forum, “but people outside of a town like this might.”
She showed Nucla students a TV piece she did more than 15 years ago that featured Ethon Case in the mutton bustin’. She said it appeared on ABC World News Tonight, and people in the city, who’d never heard of mutton bustin’ — and much less had seen a rodeo — really enjoyed it. She wants to inspire students to tell the stories of their own community.
With the deadline for student submissions coming right up, Russell hopes youth will consider sending in their work: poetry, personal essays, art and more. The next few months will focus on editing The San Miguel Current, plus laying it all out and getting it ready for press.
Lewis was a correspondent for 42 years with NBC News. He retired from the network in 2012 and is now working on a podcast with Muller for Telluride Science called “Straight Up.”
Muller is an award-winning broadcast journalist who worked at CBS and ABC News. She’s also an author and a professor emerita of broadcast journalism, who taught at University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism for 15 years.
To learn more about The San Miguel Current, or to submit student writing, art, poetry and journalism pieces, the public is invited to visit www.thesanmiguelcurrent.org.
Lewis and Muller agreed the work True North Youth Program does is excellent.
“We love what they’re doing,” Muller said. “They’re one of the most successful youth organizations I’ve seen.”
“Vivian is a dynamo,” Lewis said. “She’s amazing.”
