A small gathering of broad-minded students, discussing writing competitions and their own personal work, is what a typical Wordsmiths meeting looks like. These meetings are hosted by two senior co-chairs, Arianna McCormick and Andrew Rozek, and they take place every Wednesday during lunch. This club was established in 2015 by English teacher Andrew Reise, and has always been a student-run club, mainly in the early stages of production.
“I had students in fall of 2015, Mason Prindle and Alisha Brownlow. They came up to me one day and asked if I would be an adviser for a writing club, and I told them that it sounded intriguing, but, before I’d even think about something like that, they needed two things,” Reise said. “They firstly needed to come up with a mission statement, what they’d want this club to be or be about, and secondly I said that it needed to be student-run. That next day, they came up to me with a mission statement, and a plan for two co-chairs. So, they had their plan, and I agreed to come in as an adviser.”
Wordsmiths has been a very active club, doing coffee shop poetry, schoolwide competitions, and working concessions every now and then. The club might be small, but it is advertised often, whether that’s on announcements or throughout the community.
“In Wordsmiths I am more of the kind of like, ‘let’s figure out how to advertise Wordsmiths,’ so that we can spread it throughout the community. My other co-chair plans meetings, plans all the technical things, and I get to do all of the fun stuff,” co-chair McCormick said.
The student chairs of this club have been coming to every meeting since their freshman year, and have looked forward to taking it over since then. They were elected chairs in their junior year, and now are serving their second year in a row.
“It was a small community. I knew that I had been in the club since day one, freshman year, and that I definitely wanted to take it over one day. When the past chairs Ethan Brunke and Anna Schumacher left, I knew,” Rozek said.
The election process is left up to the members of Wordsmiths, as they get to nominate and vote for whomever they deem best for the position.
“If we have co-chairs who are not seniors, they tend to continue to be our co-chairs. This year, we have two senior co-chairs, which means that at the end of the year, students who regularly come to the meetings will vote on who will be next, and they’ll nominate them. The students are really the ones who decide who will be the next co-chair,” Riese said. “Normally, in one of the later meetings, we’ll vote on that, if we have multiple students that are after the same position. They give us a small talk during one of our meetings, putting in their two cents about why they’d like to run.”
Wordsmiths of Berlin is a club based on pure interests, and showing off talents. This club is open to all, and is highly encouraged to attend if you enjoy writing or would like to advance your skills.

WoB by Taylor Van Ornum