Newsletter

Key Takeaways: 

• Benefits

  • The newsletter will increase communication and transparency between the caucus and the student body.

  • Students have a new source of information regarding events and things going on at school.

  • Students can participate in new art and writing competitions. 

• Implementation

  • Take a look at our example! Visit our website at www.Lee-Jung.com

  • Email the entire grade.

• Challenges

  • Students may not read or even open the newsletter.

  • If we send as a PDF or some other form of attachment, the students are less likely to read it.

• Solutions

  •  Incentivize the reading of the newsletter, this can include using:

    • Writing and art competitions.

    • Showcasing new discounts for Stuyvesant students.

    • Announcing various events.

    • Giving important information to students, whether that be about important upcoming dates or forms they need to fill out.

  • Give the students two options

    • Reformat it to fit an email.

    • Leave it up to them to open the file.

Background

          One of the main arches of our caucus is transparency, and we plan to uphold this tenant through our newsletter. We believe that the newsletter will allow for greater interaction between the student body and the caucus. Our newsletter will be a detailed layout of the events and announcements for the coming two weeks. Especially during quarantine, students feel very disengaged and feel like they are kept out of the loop. In order to combat this disconnect, the newsletter will help them stay connected. The newsletter would be especially important this year because blended learning will significantly decrease in-person interactions. The newsletter will help alleviate the effects of blended learning through the inclusion of information such as contests and events we are holding, student-written articles, exceptional students or clubs, and much more.

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Research

          A newsletter is not a new concept. Freshman Caucus sent out biweekly caucus updates last year. The Student Union sends out a weekly schedule. Mr. Blumm has his opportunities bulletin, and Angel Colon has his Health and Safety newsletter. What are we doing differently that warrants an entire policy? Our newsletter will be much more in touch with the student body. We want to be open about what we are working on as a caucus, shout out students for their accomplishments, and hold various art and writing competitions. Overall, we want our newsletter to feel, not like another boring update, but something engaging that students want to read, because our newsletter will be, “By the students, For the students.” 

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Benefits

          Sending out a biweekly newsletter comes with many benefits. For example, alerting students of progress within the caucus allows for a sense of trust and transparency between students and the caucus, especially during the absence of physical interaction during the coronavirus pandemic. This transparency will include the sharing of the caucus’s current progress on various projects and policies. In addition to increased transparency, the newsletter will allow students to preview events or clubs that they may be interested in. Many students come to Stuyvesant as exceptional athletes, prodigy musicians, or even just students trying to learn a skill or try a new hobby. However, many of them lose these capabilities/interests during their years at Stuyvesant, due to an overload of school work, or just a lack of enthusiasm. And some of them are led to believe Stuyvesant does not cater to their interests, but with over two hundred clubs and forty-two sports teams, but this presumption is not the case. Through our newsletter, we plan to showcase individual clubs and tell students when various interest meetings are. This feature of showcasing clubs in the newsletter has the potential to revive the interest of students and introduce them to new clubs. Furthermore, another benefit of our newsletter would be the showcasing of student work, this can include art, writing pieces, and commendable achievements made by our peers. We will also host various writing and art competitions for the student body and showcase the winners and their works through our newsletter. 

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Implementation

          The implementation of the newsletter is extremely straightforward. We plan to send emails to the entire student body containing a short introduction and the newsletter as an attachment at the bottom. We will also utilize social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram to share the newsletter. We feel that it is very important that we make the newsletter easily accessible on various platforms, especially during quarantine, where there is a significant decrease in in-person communication, for example, students are no longer learning about events through physical posters and word of mouth. 

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Challenges

          Although the implementation of this policy is rather straightforward, there are still challenges to overcome. For example, one of the main issues with sending out our biweekly newsletter is the chance that many students will simply not open it. Another challenge would be deciding the format used to send out the newsletters, whether that be as a standard email or a pdf.

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Solutions

          To combat the problem of little student interaction with the emails we send out, we will incentivize the students to read the newsletter. This can be accomplished by holding fun writing and art competitions, highlighting special achievements of students and clubs, showcasing new discounts for Stuyvesant students, and including relevant information to the Sophomore class. 

          To find out which format would be best, we plan on asking our peers which one they would prefer. We can reformat the newsletter to fit as a standard email, with the drawback would be losing the organization and existing formatting of the example newsletter. The second option would be to keep the newsletter as a pdf to keep the formatting of the newsletter, while possibly decreasing the number of students who open the newsletter.

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