Souris students fundraise Quebec trip with quirky school newspaper

French students at Souris Regional High came up with an peculiar plan to fundraisefor a trip to Quebec.

And itwas a little different than the classic school bake sale.

The 28 students of a Grade 11 French class created and sold a school paper full of comics, playful gossip, funny photoshops, investigative reports, teacher teasing and more.

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Karen Aucoin-Smith, who teaches the class, said students found theunique way to make money after realizing they could put together a funny edition of their school's tall tales.

"Fundraising in a small community can be quite tough because we fundraise for everything," she said.

"We had some funny stories that we'd like to tell so the students decided 'what if we get all these neat little stories together in a paper and we sell it to make some money?'"

Students 'really dived into' the project

The paper, titled The Maroon & Gold,took about two weeks to put together and had to be trimmed down to 21 pages to avoid using "all the paper that we had left in the building to print it," Aucoin-Smith said with laugh.

They were really excited and did a great job at getting their articles together. Karen Aucoin-Smith

To put together a paper that extensive so quickly was due to the tireless work of her eager students, she added.

"Everyone went home and really dived into what they were doing," shesaid.

"We had a student who created a crossword puzzle with Souris-slang wordsand another student who spent her weekend on the phone just coming up with ideas for investigative reports based on some stories that she knew about."

"They were really excited and did a great job at getting their articles together."

To go along with the funny portions of the paper, there's also a feature onthe school mascot's troubling past, a school spirit quiz and some letters to the editor.

The papers were sold at $3 a piece and quickly sold out during lunch hour.According to the school's main office, students even had to print more papers to meet the demand.

Aucoin-Smith said the paper has been all the talk leading up to publishing day on Friday, and they may consider a second edition.

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