Passion & Purpose: Fall 2026
Cabool R-IV students make their ‘Bark’
Schools, especially in small towns, don’t simply exist — they are a key part of local life. In Cabool, that reality extends to keeping neighbors connected via The Bark, a student-led publication that’s printed and mailed to most homes within the district.
“You can go to the gas station and pick one up in town, but if it arrives at your house, that’s even more convenient for folks,” says Dr. Nathan Christeson, Cabool R-IV School District’s director of communications, an alum of the district and leader of the Bark project. He says the project has been a good way of keeping the school and community connected, and engaging students in that process.
“Pretty much from start to finish, this is kind of (the students’) task and kind of their baby,” he says.
The Bark — a full-color, glossy magazine named in line with the school’s bulldog mascot — came to be a few years ago after the local newspaper closed. For decades, the paper had been a connection point between the Texas County-based district and the wider area.
“Once (the newspaper) went away, if folks weren’t on Facebook, they were just kind of disconnected from the school,” Christeson says. “We were trying to figure out, ‘How could we continue to tell our story? How can we continue to tell the good things that are happening at Cabool?’”
They first began an email newsletter, but that didn’t feel the same in terms of audience and reach. Christeson pitched the idea of print — and was given the green light as long as he got grants to cover it. One of them was from the CFO and the Louis L. and Julia Dorothy Coover Charitable Foundation, which granted $5,000 in May as part of the Coover/RSP Celebrate Rural Grants.
Dr. Nathan Christeson, Cabool R-IV's director of communications, shows off past issues of The Bark. Filling the gap left after the local newspaper shuttered, the student-led magazine connects the school district to the broader community.
Today, students go through a selection process to be in the class where they produce the biannual magazine, which covers stories from siblings’ beekeeping hobby to the school’s sports success and FFA’s trip to a national convention.
“They are the boots on the ground,” Christeson says of the students, who he refers to as interns in the school’s communications department. “They know all those little, small stories. As the communications director, people just expect me to know everything, (but) I don’t know if I don’t know. And so sometimes, in those situations, a really cool story will come up and it’s like, ‘Oh, I had no idea.’”
Ultimately, it’s about creating a sense of connection, building pride in what a small school can do, and finding purpose, which has led at least one student to pursue communications professionally.
“I think a lot of kids have that school pride; they want to tell the positive things that are happening,” Christeson says, noting that it’s in contrast to a stigma that a small school can be limiting. Not true, he says, pointing out the fact that the district has been Family, Community and Career Leaders of America national champions twice in recent years.
“Just because we are small doesn’t mean we can’t do really big things and really cool things,” he says. “I think a lot of our students have seen the product that we’ve put out and they’re like, ‘Hey, I want to be a part of that’ — of sharing the good news that’s happening with their peers.”
—by Kaitlyn McConnell
