Bonfire Ignites School Spirit with Student-Run Publications
By: Allison Gee, Operations Editor
With the new phone ban stirring controversy and sparking backlash around campus, school administrators and leaders scrambled to find ways to keep students engaged. What if the answer was not more rules, but more stories? This is where Bonfire comes in. Starting this month, Bonfire: the school's creative writing class, will be reintroducing its own bi-monthly newspaper, the Equus. The editorial staff hopes to pack the newspaper with recent updates regarding the school, as well as creative journalism, poetry, short stories, and student features. A newspaper might’ve sounded old school, especially to the freshmen, but back in the day, it was the way to receive all the latest tea, and while Bonfire had not promised gossip, they promise something real: a platform to learn more about different surroundings, a place to showcase their own talented writers, a place to connect each and every one of us, and a place to belong.
The WSMA Bronze Star Winners (All-State Honorable Mention) from Cody enjoy their awards together. Photo by Erica Quick.
English teacher Alec Giacoletto is the current advisor of Bonfire and the driving force behind the new creative processes taking place. Previously, Bonfire was run as a creative writing class and functioned similarly to other classes around the high school. However, when Giacoletto took over the class, he wanted to craft a journalism program that developed writers in many forms. With Giacoletto's ideas for innovation, he described Bonfire as “an all-encompassing, multi-genre publications class that gives students a chance at various writing talents and writing skills; to illustrate themselves, to illustrate their interests, and to illustrate their artistic skills.” The class is overseen by both Giacoletto and Cody High's new Activities Director, Matt McFadden, and is run daily by a group of seven editors, all with different tasks. Students participating in the class see it as more than credits on a piece of paper. Giacoletto makes it clear that their “number one mission is to make better people. The second goal is to make better writers.” He affirmed, “In that order, better people, better writers.” Bonfire has many long-term goals, and most of them relate to the culture. However, as a short-term goal, Bonfire aims to return to All-State-level journalism following a lengthy hiatus. Cody’s print journalism program has received 40 all-state awards at state journalism, but with the intensity of COVID-19, Cody schools have not been back since. State journalism took place on October 20 this year, and McFadden added, “We're known at the state level for a lot of things, and I think this is one of them that I'd like to see us be considered great at – and I think we can. We have Mr. Giacoletto, who is fired up to do it, and he's got a great group of leadership.” Cody High Students Sunday Schuh, Gabriel Bree, Aiden Power, and Allison Gee all received All-State honors this year in their state journalism portfolios, and many more began paving the way for future changes in upcoming competitions. Giacolletto and Quick were both elected to the Wyoming Student Media Association Board (WSMA) with the intention to help create opportunities for creative writing and to cultivate a new era of objective, student-based journalism.
The newspaper is not a new idea, and used to be commonly seen around the high school years prior. New CHS Broadcast Journalism teacher, Erika Quick, confirmed that, “Bonfire has impacted kids in the past because it allows them to get an immediate story out.” Quick has a long background with Bonfire and was one of the teachers to help shape the class into a reality. Every kid at Cody High has a story to tell, and the Bonfire team wants to create a platform to make that happen. While there is a website with monthly postings of student writing, Bonfire wanted to expand, and as Quick said, create a platform.
Connecting the school is one of Bonfire’s biggest goals, and they wanted to make the news accessible to everyone. It has been eight years since the last newspaper was released at Cody High, and teachers and students alike see the need for it. Gabe Bree, the Equus editor and manager, announced, “I want it to look like a classic newspaper, but with touches of Cody spirit. It is essential to me that everyone is represented in our paper. I don’t want the paper to be all about one topic. Variety and inclusion are our number one priority.” Throughout the year, Bonfire plans to release 11 editions of the paper bi-monthly and plans to cover diverse types of activities and topics. Bonfire has had major changes in the last few years, but it is a definite goal of Giacolletto and students together to keep this paper going long past their time.
“I think any student-led journalism program is essential,” stated Quick, “especially for small communities like Cody, Wyoming, where we have limited access to our reports.” While a newspaper does work to give students a bigger voice, one of the main goals is to connect the student body, and that is only possible if student feedback is involved. Bonfire will do its best to give Cody High relevant, unbiased, and detailed information. The class does encourage any kids who want to share their own work to reach out to the class advisor, Alec Giacoletto.
Bonfire is more than a writing class that checks a box on paper. Bonfire is a gateway into becoming a better person, an opportunity to collaborate and learn about others, and even more so, a space to display writing, similar to how an artist puts their work in a gallery. Writing connects people, and the mission of the Bonfire class is to connect the school. The paper is a simple way to do so, and as a class, they look forward to feeding the flame.