As reported earlier this week, the academic building at Sheldon Clark High School is badly in need of a new roof, which currently leaks and leaves puddles, ruining books and equipment.
Joshua Moore, a senior at SCHS, said he didn’t want to cause problems, but he did want attention brought to the conditions at the school.
“I didn’t want to stir up trouble,” Moore said. “We [students at Sheldon Clark] have lived with this situation for a while. But when the floor tiles started coming up off the floor, it really got to me.”
“I interviewed some teachers and my friend Jamie Duty took pictures,” Moore said. “We asked permission from the teachers, and got their comments. Then, after I posted the story, I had some teachers look at it. They liked it. They said they thought the writing was good.”
Josh has been writing for years, mainly poetry, lyrics and personal narratives for school. But, he says, he really didn’t feel the desire to write for a typical high school newspaper.
“I wanted to start a kind of ‘underground’ paper,” Josh said. “We thought we would maybe print copies ourselves and distribute them around school.”
The expose’ on the conditions at Sheldon Clark was the first piece he wrote, he said. And while the underground newspaper didn’t quite catch on, he posted the story about the school on Myspace, on online community where members share information, pictures and stories.
Josh estimates the story has had at least 40 views, out of about 200 people who could possibly read it.
It is hard not compare Josh with another other Moore who uses the media to bring attention to causes: Michael Moore, who has made films about corporate greed, gun violence and the healthcare crisis.
“One of my teachers actually commented that I look like him,” Josh said.
The story about the conditions at SCHS is but the first in what appears to be a promising career in journalism.
“I plan to go to either Marshall or the University of Kentucky, and major in Journalism,” Moore said. “I attended the Governor’s School for the Arts in Lexington, and I really enjoyed the city and meeting different kinds of people.”
Having scored an overall score of 31 on his SATs, which included at perfect 36 in the Reading portion, Moore has applied for several scholarships. He is valedictorian of the SCHS Class of 2009.
A self-proclaimed “nerd,” Josh is a member of the Academic Team, a comic book and action figure collector and a basketball fan whose idea of a perfect weekend is simply hanging out with his friends and catching a movie.
“I just try to remember to keep smiling,” he said. “I remind myself to be optimistic all the time with a simple grin.”
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