First Lady Michelle Obama poses with Mayra Guzman, 2009 Cochise College graduate and Willcox High School valedictorian and former senior editor of TAG Magazine, and Gary Clement, teen program director at the Elsie S. Hogan Community Library.
Students in James Allred’s dual-credit marketing class offered by Cochise College at Willcox High School recently received the 2009 Coming Up Taller Award and were honored by First Lady Michelle Obama for their work with the TAG Teen Program.
Coming Up Taller is a national initiative that recognizes and supports outstanding out-of-school and after-school arts and humanities programs for children, especially those with great potential but limited outlets for creative expression. A project of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH), in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the awards honor programs that offer exceptional learning experiences in the arts and humanities and that have a tangible effect on the lives of young people as evidenced through improved academic scores, enhanced life skills, and positive relationships with peers and adults.
The TAG Teen Program is a partnership between the Elsie S. Hogan Community Library and Willcox High School that publishes a general-interest magazine that is distributed free of charge to Willcox-area students in grades 7 through 12. Students in Allred’s dual-credit class own their magazine in every aspect: creative and technical; meeting deadlines and managing contributors; editing, proofreading and distribution; and selling advertising, paying the bills and making intelligent tradeoffs. The most recent issue of TAG – now in its fourth year – has grown by more than 50 percent to 40 full-color pages, with almost three times as many contributors as the first issue. The magazine was one of 15 youth arts and humanities programs honored during a Nov. 4 award ceremony in Washington, D.C.
TAG fosters long-term commitment by teens, many of whom continue in the program from year to year, growing in confidence and responsibility from contributor to editor to senior editor. In the process of publishing three issues each year, teens explore their creativity in art and writing and learn self-confidence, gain interpersonal skills, and are empowered to strike out on future paths that they would have considered only dreams before. In addition, the TAG Teen Program received a $10,000 stipend.
“I work for one period each day with marketing students who are learning through hands-on experience how to manage TAG Magazine,” Allred said. “As the first class of its type at WHS, these students are doing remarkably well and learning what it takes to succeed in the real world. Congratulations to all those who came before me who helped make this possible.”