Canopy Magazine Club, Jail Mail Club, Tech for Social Impact Club and Video Game Jam Club were among the new clubs that made their debut during Spring Club Day at lunch Thursday on the Quad at Palo Alto High School.
More information on each club is provided below:
Canopy Magazine Club:
According to junior and co-president Om Rajan, the Canopy Magazine Club will give students a platform to explore environmental topics from multiple angles, ranging from policy to everyday observations in nature.
“Canopy Magazine is Paly’s first environmental and nature-focused magazine,” Rajan said. “Students can write about stories from all different nature topics. They can write about climate policy, but they can also write about cool facts about nature. Anything about nature we [Canopy Magazine] do.”
Rajan said the magazine also offers students ways to take on editorial and creative roles beyond writing.
“We do have leadership opportunities,” Rajan said. “We have section editors for specific sections. We also have a design team, which will be specifically helping with bringing the design of our magazine together to make our magazine look really good.”
Canopy Magazine meets weekly on Mondays during lunch in room 1706.
Jail Mail Club:
According to sophomore and co-president Kyle Greenberg, Jail Mail Club’s purpose is to move beyond classroom discussions and give students a space to put what they learn about the justice system into action. Through a program called Inside Circle, club members are matched with incarcerated individuals to exchange letters.
“What Jail Mail does is it takes us outside the educational sphere and brings us into a space where we can actually apply the knowledge we’ve learned from various classes, like history on the harms of the criminal justice system and English classes, where you learn how to write in general,” Greenberg said.
Greenberg said the club focuses on helping students understand how the criminal justice system affects society and why that awareness matters beyond school.
“We educate on the harms of the criminal justice system, so we [students] can be better citizens,” Greenberg said.
Jail Mail meets bi-weekly on Tuesdays during lunch in room 305.
Tech for Social Impact Club:
Junior and co-president Maria Uribe Estrada said Tech for Social Impact Club aims to connect technical skills with real needs in the local community.
“Our [club’s] point is to build a portfolio of projects,” Uribe Estrada said. “We are going to go around the Palo Alto community and find people who need services like coding websites or projects like that.”
According to Uribe Estrada, meetings are structured around both learning about socially-minded technology and collaborating on active projects.
“In meetings, we are going to be talking about new technologies that are beneficial to society and also brainstorming ideas for marketing and outreach and working on our projects,” Uribe Estrada said.
Tech for Social Impact meets bi-weekly on Tuesdays during lunch in room MAC202.
Video Game Jam Club:
According to sophomore and president Joseph Song, Video Game Jam Club emphasizes hands-on challenges while remaining accessible to students with varying levels of experience in coding.
“It’s a more competition-based club,” Song said. “Anyone can join since we’re trying to do implementations of AI and other bootcamps to quickly get people into being able to hop in and have experience with a more loose STEM club.”
Song said that Video Game Jam Club encourages members to take on multiple creative and technical roles throughout the game-development process.
“The whole point of the club is that you’re trying to make a video game by yourself,” Song said. “There’s definitely code, there’s designing, musical abilities and then art that will establish [the video game] further.”
Video Game Jam Club meets weekly on Wednesdays during lunch in room 855.