HELM holds club week

Jessie Wang

Elliot Kampmeier (9), Serena Lu (12), Gwyneth Chen (12) and Amla Rashingkar (10) review student work during one of HELM’s workshops this week. HELM members also sold boba tea outside Manzanita on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday for $5 each.

by Jessie Wang, Reporter

Harker Eclectic Literature Magazine (HELM) sold boba tea and hosted art and writing workshops this week for their club week.

Club members sold boba tea at lunch on Tuesday, Wednesday and after school on Friday in front of Manzanita for $5 each. The money earned from the boba sales will be used in part to pay for the print issue of this year’s HELM magazine.

The art and writing workshops were held during Tuesday and Thursday long lunch in English teacher and HELM advisor Dr. Anne Douglas’s room. At the workshops, HELM members offered constructive criticism to peers about their works. People who wanted their work to be reviewed were asked to submit their work to [email protected] by Nov. 6.

“We look at the works that people have submitted and we edit them,” HELM club member Amla Rashingkar (10) said. “We give artists feedback and tell them what we like and what we don’t like and how they can make their works stronger.”

During the workshops, club members looked at and read the work that was to be critiqued and shared their thoughts on what worked and what needed change during a group discussion. Some of the discussions took more than 10 minutes to finish, with each HELM member making and defending points on the work in question.

“I think the workshop is wonderful because it allows the opportunity for all the club members to come together and discuss each other’s submissions. Having a lot of people give feedback on your writing and art is a really good way of finding mistakes that you were unable to catch before, because you have these different perspectives and different viewpoints analyzing your work,” HELM club member Alexander Young (11) said. “It really helps towards generating a better product for things like the Scholastic competition in December.”

WiSTEM will be holding their club week next week. They will be selling boba tea after school every day of the week for $5 and homemade brownies after school on Nov. 14 and Nov. 16 for $2.