Communication Arts

It Starts at the Very Beginning

Opportunities for the development of communication skills abound at all ages at JA. Communication skills are developed in all divisions through daily classroom interaction. In Preschool and Lower School, students start their day with Morning Meeting, where they learn to greet one another, shake hands, use eye contact, and listen as others share. Lower School students are regularly given the opportunity to present speeches to their classmates. In Middle and Upper schools, more formal instruction is offered in presentation opportunities and special courses. Communicative arts give JA students the skills to think and communicate verbally in a technologically and visually-driven era.

Sports Broadcasting and Sports Management

The Jackson Academy Sports Management class is designed to educate students about opportunities within collegiate sports teams, university recreation programs, and amateur athletic organizations and to give them an idea of available careers. Students can volunteer for service with Raider Network, where they participate in the production of sports coverage that is streamed live on JA’s Raider Network.

School Newspaper

The JA Chronicle is a student-produced newspaper now published online. Students use the design platform Canva to publish each issue. Students agree that joining the staff is like joining a family and love sharing their creative and investigative talents through writing and photography. The paper is prepared by a staff consisting of students in ninth through twelfth grade who are supervised by a qualified staff member from the English department. The JA Chronicle staff prepares opinion pieces, feature and entertainment stories, and reports on other happenings in the JA community and surrounding areas.

Yearbook

Each year Upper School students collaborate to create the Reflections yearbook. The Reflections staff is responsible for the publication of the 272-page album. The staff spends the year photographing and gathering information on activities at JA. With three deadlines throughout the year, each staff member is responsible for their own pages and editing for publication.  Each year the design is updated as new students add their unique touches of creativity to the yearbook’s production.