In her eighth-grade year, senior Ella Peirce was sitting with the Class of 2026, eager to talk about their high school classes. They began watching a video of all the potential electives, and one particular clip caught her eye: Writing for Publication.
She saw former The Central Trend (TCT) administrator Ken George standing in front of Room 139 with chairs and couches arranged around the room in a big circle. Ella was intrigued and wrote “Writing for Publication” down on her schedule form. However, she had no idea how writing those three words down would change her life.
“My mom sent me a screenshot of a text the other day that said, ‘I kind of regret writing down Writing for Publication, but I’ll take it and see how it goes,’” Ella said. “It ended up becoming something that I never could’ve predicted back then. I’m just so, so lucky that I randomly decided to write that down.”
Writing for Publication is a one-semester class that ultimately becomes a class to write for The Central Trend, FHC’s online newspaper. In her eighth-grade year, Ella had no idea how much this class would change her life.
“Over the years, pretty much every senior who has left TCT has talked about how it is like a family and how it’s been their home within school,” Ella said. “I’ve felt like it’s a place I can go if I’m having a bad day or having a great day, and need to share. It’s just always a place that I’m able to go home to at the very end of the day during sixth hour and be myself.”
Ella’s time in TCT has been such an important part of her life. Throughout the years in the class, she has seen many Editors-in-Chief come and go as they have all graduated. While Editors were typically only seniors, one Editor, FHC Alum Sofia Hargis-Acevedo, was an Editor during her junior and senior years. This is when Ella knew that she wanted that to be her ultimate goal for the class; she was so passionate about TCT, and she wanted to take that passion and work hard to put it into a leadership role.
“Finding out about [becoming an Editor-in-Chief] at the end of my sophomore year was something that genuinely taught me how to be proud of myself,” Ella said. “It was the first thing that I felt like I worked for this, I earned this, and I got it. It was the first thing that I really worked hard to achieve, and it taught me that if I put my mind to something, I am able to achieve it.”
Becoming an Editor of TCT has been a transformative experience for Ella. She found her love for journalism, for the wonderful community in the class, and it taught her how to be a leader.
As she approaches her final days of TCT, she is beginning to think about her hope for the class as a whole. She is beginning to say goodbye to the community she has been a part of and developed, and she has so many hopes for this community and class.
“[My hope for TCT is that it] will always be a place for people to come home to at the end of the day, and that it’ll be one of the most special communities within our school,” Ella said. “I truly, truly hope that everyone feels like they belong on the staff, and that they have meaningful words to contribute. Journalism as a whole is so important, and I think that it’s important that everyone learns how to use their voice to spread important messages.”
Ella believes that every voice on TCT is so unique, and it is important that they are heard. By joining the class, she was able to be heard and provide a voice to the community around her, and by becoming Editor-in-Chief, she was able to give every voice in the class a chance to be heard.
Her desire for everyone’s voice to be heard has ignited her desire to major in English at the University of Michigan (U-M). While there is no Journalism major at U-M, Ella hopes to take the versatile English major to become a writer, a journalist, or maybe even an Editor-in-Chief one day.
“I really love the aspect of giving people feedback on their work,” Ella said. “[I like] editing other people’s stories and being able to kind of build them up, and give them constructive criticism at the same time. Becoming an Editor-in-Chief in the future would be amazing, but that’s also a super difficult goal to achieve.”
Ella is getting ready to move on from being Editor-in-Chief for The Central Trend to maybe becoming Editor-in-Chief for a bigger newspaper one day. She will begin to move on from the community she experienced through her time at FHC, as the seniors before her, too. However, she knows that she will never get to live through something like TCT again, and she is eternally grateful for that experience.
“TCT overall is the most community that I have felt at FHC the whole time I’ve been here, through trying sports and clubs,” Ella said. “There’s just nothing quite like it… It’s like a family. I’ve been able to meet many of my best friends through this class, and it brings you to people who are like-minded, who love to write, and are similarly poetic. It’s a great way to find your people.”
