Dane Erbach sits down at a desk while his newspaper students come up with a question they have about their stories. Erbach continues to push his students in the right direction without directly giving them an answer, knowing that he is doing what is right for the newspaper.

Erbach is currently in his 18 year at MCHS, teaching Honors English I at the Freshman Campus and being advisor for the school’s newspaper, the McHenry Messenger. His writing and teaching career started in college on a writing scholarship and writing weekly columns for the student newspaper. Over time he wanted to help students with their writing, leading to his teaching career. Erbach explained that his role in the McHenry Messenger is mainly to guide students, and his role is often misperceived among many around the school.

“Obviously [running the newspaper], that’s not what I do,” Erbach says, “but not a lot of people know that it is a student newspaper, and that I try to empower staff to do the work and stuff. So I kinda see my job as a teacher trying to make sure my students develop the skills they need to run a newspaper and publish good news.”

Erbach pushes his students to the right answers, and directions without giving them a direct way to handle their problem to help them grow and become more self-sufficient as writers and working as a team. Director of student activities and previous broadcast teacher Mitch Stengel talks about his perspective as someone on the outside of the Messenger.

“He meets students where they are, and helps to kind of drag them where they need to be right, and empowers them and pushes them,” Stengel says, “especially in a class like The McHenry Messenger where you’re not only empowering students via their writing, but you are empowering students to meet deadlines. You’re empowering students to be in charge of one another.”

Erbach also explained that he feels the Messenger is often misperceived due to its official status as a co-curricular, similar to an extracurricular. Because of this classification, he feels our staff is often overlooked.

“I have a feeling there’s just a lot of people out there that don’t know alot about what we do,” Erbach says. “Because they don’t read the newspaper, or what they do read, they just assume that the teacher is telling someone to write under the website tab, because my name’s going to be on it [the issues], because the buck stops with me.”

Erbach does a great job of letting students take ownership of their work even if it may be a more controversial article the student will take ownership of whatever consequences may follow the story.

“There are incidents that have happened over the past six or seven years that he’s been the advisor where you know,” Stengel says, “either an administrator or someone in our district might have a problem with something that someone wrote, and he says, ‘Well, it’s the student.’”

“You gotta talk to the student. They’re the author, right? They’re the ones who hit publish on this article. It’s not me, right?” Stengel says. “And so I think that he just does an incredible job of empowering students, not only about their rights, but also Illinois law, and what are the boundaries you can push, and what are those boundaries that maybe you have to stay in between.”

Erbach’s final message to people either reading the newspaper or wondering how it functions and runs is that he would like people to know that whenever the Messenger may receive an award, or be nominated for an award, that it’s the student, and to remind people it is a student newspaper.

“I want people to know that every time we get an award, that it’s a student, and that every time a story of ours gets thousands of views, that it’s the students’ work,” Erbach says. “My response would be to keep reminding people it’s a student newspaper, and I do my best just to use that language all the time.”

Editor’s note: This article is about the McHenry Messenger’s advisor Dane Erbach. He played no role in reporting for, writing or editing this story prior to publication and participated in the story only so far that it enabled the First Amendment rights of this student newspaper’s staff.