It’s 9 a.m.
The halls of Coppell Middle School West are flooded with students as the bell rings, dismissing them to their study hall period. Learners rush to get to their Wrangler Time classrooms, but four students turn the pages to another mission instead.
They converge in room 203 to discuss plans for the upcoming issue of The Wrangler Times.
The Wrangler Times, a magazine produced entirely by the Magazine Club staff, serves to tell the stories of CMSW students and share news across the community.
CMSW eighth grader and editor-in-chief of The Wrangler Times Arnav Arora proposed the idea of the Magazine Club to STEM teacher Jackie Zaback as a way to inform the student body about events occurring around CMSW.
“I want to make sure that everything that happens in school is recorded in this magazine so everyone is always up to date,” Arora said. “ I don’t want anyone to feel pressured to go somewhere they don’t want to just so they know what it’s like.”
Upon hearing Arora’s passion for the project, Zaback agreed to sponsor the club without hesitation.
“It’s important that students who have a passion for something get the opportunity to pursue it,” Zaback said. “The boys are very passionate about this magazine and I wanted to give them the opportunity to publish something that they were really proud of.”
The club currently sits at more than 70 members, larger than almost any other club at the school. To accommodate the interests of this many students, the team decided to completely digitize the program.
“I thought, if it’s a digital magazine, the club should be digital too, ” Zaback said. “Arnav suggested we open a Schoology course and it worked out really well. We can have this big club because we don’t physically meet.”
Four editors oversee the production of the magazine: Arora, sports editor Sri Charan Pasala, club section editor Purush Srivats and fine arts editor Sahaj Jaiswal. The magazine covers concerts, sporting events, student life and even includes an advice column where writers can share tips on overcoming obstacles that middle school students may face. Additionally, The Wrangler Times acts as a platform for clubs around CMSW to advertise their events to increase attendance and engagement throughout the community.
The first edition of the digital magazine was published on Nov. 2, but achieving that was not easy. With such a large staff, the editors ran into some bumps during the editing process.
“Our main issue was formatting,” Arora said. “My number one thing was consistency and some people didn’t know how to do that.”
The editors took what they learned from the process of creating the first edition and noted changes they could make to prevent issues from occurring again. To make the magazine look more cohesive and professional, for instance, Arora plans to make a template that automatically formats the stories, making the process for the second edition of the magazine smoother.
The desire to create awareness was not a mission limited solely to Arora. Srivats found that writing for the magazine allowed him to use his voice to both connect students at school and show the community what CMSW has to offer.
“There are multiple different clubs that show multiple different things that West has,” Srivats said. “A lot of it I didn’t know about, so I thought it would be interesting to talk about.”
As the staff finishes the production of one issue of The Wrangler Times, they turn the pages to another as they begin to work on the second issue of the magazine, set to release online in early December. As staff on the magazine come back to school the following day, they feel power in not only being part of their diverse community but bringing attention to it.
Follow Sameeha (@ssameehaa) and @CHSCampusNews on X.
