UAE | Education
News from the classroom
‘DIS Compass' tackles community issues from the perspective of students
- By Heather Madore, Community Journalist
- Published: 00:00 April 24, 2010
- Image Credit: Zarina Fernandes/Gulf News
- Pupils from Deira International School, who started the Compass newspaper for the school, discuss the forthcoming issue at their monthly meeting.
Dubai: Grabbing hold of their futures, pupils from Deira International School have given voice to their thoughts with their own newspaper.
The DIS Compass is a monthly publication covering news, sports, games and human interest stories.
"The main idea is to allow pupils to experience as many [things as possible] ... so they can decide wisely what to do in their future," Mohammad Tahboub told Gulf News. He is the editor of the Compass.
Middle school principal Tony Ross believes the idea of a pupil-run paper is something to take advantage of because "anything that encourages pupil leadership, awareness of current affairs and encourages entrepreneurship is something, I believe, education is really about".
Ross also said that the newspaper is important to the school because it is a way to promote cultural awareness and teach tolerance to pupils.
"[It's] a great way to challenge pupils ... to encourage leadership in all the components of publishing a paper and promote global awareness," he said.
According to Ross, the school also sees the project as career training for its pupils.
"We have a formal link with Al Futtaim Group [and provide] job training programmes for our pupils," he says. "We see the pupil newspaper as part of that, as there will be budding photographers, printers, [and possibly] paper owners. We see it as more than a paper, but as a [future] career for the kids."
For Humna Bhagani, pupil news editor, the paper is a way to bring points of view together to make people understand.
However, she is also aware of her readership, and said: "At the end of the day, we want to attract pupils so we don't [cover] global issues. We like to bring things that members of the school can relate to, things that affect their lives."
Topics
Pupil journalist Nour Bandali believes the Compass accomplishes this by trying to cover stories they know pupils have talked about.
"Topics that people have touched on, we kind of go and touch on them again and explain them in more detail," she said. "For example we had this rumour that [MP3 players] can cause hearing loss. We found that it was kind of an old story but we decided to touch on it again, [do more research] and just kind of jog people's memory."
David Foukaih, another pupil journalist, thinks the Compass does a good job of covering school and community news. "It gives lots of information [of things going on] in school and out of school. Like it gives a calendar each month about great events happening in Dubai," he said. "[We cover] examinations, [do] interviews with teachers, recipes on how to cook stuff. It's really good and I think people use it a lot, especially the teachers." On the day the paper comes out, pupil writer Tarek Bandali said that at lunches or breaks you see most people reading the paper.
However, he thinks that the Compass' plan to introduce a website next year will help expand their reader base.
"I think going online will be a good idea," he said.
Best shot
"I think that the website is going to be more for parents than pupils. It's usually the pupils that have a copy of the paper, so if parents want to check out the stories, the online site will be good."
In the end, online or not, the pupils of the DIS Compass will continue to work hard to bring the issues of their school and the community to light.
"We're not all professional journalists," said Nour. "We try our best, so when we do our research it might not be perfect and might be even a little bit biased, but at least we try. That is what is important."
They believe other schools should follow suit because pupil newspapers promote the development of talent, teamwork and provides an outlet for self expression.
Printing and editorial
DIS Compass is a tabloid-sized newspaper with each issue between 12 and 20 pages. The school prints between 350 and 400 copies a month.
The team: Members of the DIS Compass
- Gustav Mangion Grade 11
- Humna Bhagani Grade 9
- Victor Fandeyev Grade 7
- Zibah Fairooz Grade 7
- Nurina Syahirah Grade 6
- Raena Naghedi Nia Grade 6
- Mohammad Cooper Grade 8
- Sa'ad Salman Syed Grade 11
- Nour Bandali Grade 10
- Atif Al Nahdi Grade 8
- Tarek Bandali Grade 8
- David Foukaih Grade 8
Do you know of similar efforts by other schools? How important are such initiatives in building a pupil's personality?
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