By Heather Lusk
Students and families involved in the R.O.C.K. program at Zionsville United Methodist Church have a new way to keep up with the group’s latest happenings with the launch of ROCK, Paper, Scissors, a newspaper created by two students.
The R.O.C.K. program – Really Outrageous Christian Kids – has never had anything like this before, but when Pleasant View Elementary students Elliott Peter and Ethan Simmons asked if they could create a newspaper, they were met with enthusiasm.
“It’s given the whole R.O.C.K. program a lot of excitement,” R.O.C.K. director Kathy Gibson said.
They created the semi-monthly paper to let people know what was happening in the program. They initially wanted to call it the ROCK Current because they were familiar with the weekly Zionsville newspaper, but recently changed it to ROCK, Paper, Scissors as a play on words.
The stories range from an interview with the weekly ROCK Star to comics to a reminder to keep a family or person in their prayers.
“I love the way that they write,” Gibson said. “We try to reach beyond the four walls and teach the children about service.”
As editors, Elliott and Ethan have established a deadline, schedule and certain days of the week during which they work along with a sign-up sheet for articles. After a financial donation from a parent, they are now creating a business plan and are figuring out how to best use the money. The paper has expanded from its first three-page issue in February to tripling in size for the fourth issue.
As with many first endeavors, it took some adjustments to make the concept work.
“We had the idea a while ago but it didn’t work,” Ethan said.
After attempting a first issue, others offered to contribute. “And so we had a lot of things to put in, mostly pictures and comics,” said Elliot.
The paper is not limited to students from a specific school.
“It brings kids together from other schools, too,” Gibson said. “They have to work together as a team to do this.”
A core group of students between kindergarten and fifth grade work on the paper continuously.
“It’s great, it tells news, they can get everyone involved,” Gibson said. “In this day and age of so much technology, here’s a group of kids taking paper and pencil and caring about writing.”
Read ROCK, Paper, Scissors
Printed copies of ROCK, Paper, Scissors are available at ROCK, and an electronic version is posted online at https://www.facebook.com/pages/ROCK-Really-Outrageous-Christian-Kids/111299572287394.
