The Flying Monkey

My daughter told me she wants to start a newspaper as a homeschool project.

Outsize dreams come easily to my daughter. When she was studying pirates seven years ago, she decided to build a pirate ship out of popsicle sticks, complete with a mast and rigging. A little over two years ago, when she was accepted into the sixth-grade class of a college preparatory school, she decided to bake and sell cookies to raise the $26,000 a year tuition. Like those, this one stumped as impractical and unrealistic, until late Tuesday night.

And so, allow me to present "The Flying Monkey."

As our latest initiative in student-led learning, "The Flying Monkey" is going to give my daughter an opportunity to practice writing, it will familiarize her with the geography of New Jersey, and it will teach her some basic HTML and promotional skills. On top of that, it will be a way for her to earn a little money.

Here's how it works.

I've been getting audition notices for the past year from several community theaters in Middlesex, Somerset and Mercer counties. Some time ago, as I started adding Facebook friends from shows I had been in, I started posting these notices on Facebook. I quit Facebook back before Christmas, but I believe theaters still benefit from their notices being reposted -- and other people benefit if these notices are all put in one place.

I've been using Blogger for something on the order of a decade. It's got an easy interface, but it also gives knowledgable users the option of coding their own HTML. That's a chance for my daughter to think along the lines of design, and in a computer language. That's a plus.

When theaters send audition notices, or other announcements, they do so in a first-person. We'll be posting them on a third-party web site, requiring some rewriting. I've already explained to my daughter the nature of the Associated Press stylebook and its rules for grammar, spelling, and on and on. This will engage both her writing and her editing skills, while instilling in her a style of correct grammar and punctuation. Another plus.

Already my daughter has been in three shows with me: "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever" at Villagers Theatre, "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" at Brook Arts Center, and "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" at Kelsey Theatre. This represents an opportunity for her to become more familiar with the community theater scene in our area. As she becomes more familiar to directors and theaters in the area, she may even get cast more regularly. Greater socialization, greater memorization, greater familiarity with literature. More pluses.

And, if she gets her way, at some point we'll start adding reviews of the plays we see. Doing that will mean seeing more shows. Another plus.

Already my daughter has begun thinking about ways to promote the web site so it draws more traffic and we can justify asking theaters for complimentary tickets to review their shows. That's strategy at work, and critical thinking. She realizes it's going to take work to make the site succeed, and at this point, she's willing to put in the effort. A huge plus.

Best of all, this webzine is essentially her idea, and it's something she wants to do. As far as education goes, that's the biggest plus of all.