Cedar Springs — Throughout this summer, if you happen to take a look at the Cedar Springs High School Facebook page or the Red Hawk Nation Instagram page, about 80% of what you’ll see is going to be student-created, student-curated content.
From messages of motivation and words of wisdom to student success stories, just about all of it is being shaped and scheduled by the young minds in Justin Harnden’s Media II class, who, for the second year in a row, are taking part in a summer-long “takeover” of school social media channels.
That involves working during the school year to build up a backlog of content that can be used to populate social media pages during the summer months.
Driving the whole affair are two soon-to-be seniors — Marcus McCarty and Phoebe Fisk. Marcus and Phoebe were the only students left during the last few weeks of the year, as the bulk of the class graduated; this made them the de facto schedulers, masters of the summer social media scheduling calendar.
That’s how they spent the last few days before summer break — loading up the school’s Buffer social media scheduler with enough posts to keep people engaged until school starts again.
“It has to be engaging and interesting,” Phoebe said of the material the students put out. “I think it’s really good during the summer to remember that we do have a good community within Cedar Springs schools. There is a connection.”

Phoebe and Marcus said they got the assignment before they really understood that they were going to effectively be social-media managers.
The task was for every student in the class to create posts that fit with one of several themes: Motivational Mondays feature staff members’ favorite inspiring quotes; Talent Tuesdays highlight students’ special skills; Wisdom Wednesdays feature quotes from famous people; Throwback Thursdays look back at the high school’s past; and Future Fridays look at what students want to do post-high school.
There are also posts spotlighting school clubs and celebrating student achievements, as well as a few fun photos with students dressed as the school’s Red Hawk mascot.
“At first it was just an assignment for us,” Phoebe said. “I didn’t really know what we were doing with it.”
Said Marcus: “I didn’t really know what it was going to be.”
Marcus added that, as the year was winding down, Harnden let him and Phoebe know to plan out the posts for the summer.
“Two weeks ago we were told we were going to schedule everything out — one (post) every day for the next 10 weeks. Since everyone worked on it, we had a lot to go from,” he said.
‘They’re creating, they’re organizing, they’re scheduling’
Harnden said the social-media takeover helps drive home some of the lessons he tries to impart about the importance of branding, marketing and public relations.
“Marketing and PR is such a huge career for so many businesses right now, and for social media especially,” Harnden said. “I think being able to create posts that are branded specific to your thing — it empowers them to be really the ones who are fulfilling the whole process. They’re creating, they’re organizing, they’re scheduling.
‘I think it’s really good during the summer to remember that we do have a good community within Cedar Springs schools. There is a connection.’
— junior Phoebe Fisk
“These kids all leave their class with a portfolio of the work that they’ve created — the stuff that they’ve done — that they can give to employers or people and use as a direct reference in the job world.”
Marcus and Phoebe both said their experience in the class, and with the takeover project, has increased their appreciation for the vocational value of social-media mastery.
“I enjoy creating the posts, getting engagement, seeing progress — things like that,” Marcus said.
Phoebe said she’d even be open to considering a career that involved social media in some capacity.
“I definitely like it a lot, and if an opportunity was presented to do something (I might take it),” she said.
Read more from Cedar Springs:
• She can finally envision her future, and it’s looking bright
• High-schoolers rethink how they interact with media