At the most formative stage of my life, just before I started my senior year in high school, the sports editor of my hometown newspaper took a chance and hired me as a part-time, minimum-wage employee. Regular readers of this column have heard this fairy tale before.

Now hear this: 33 years later, I have revisited my roots. I have remembered my dreams. I have asked myself: If an editor could take a chance on me when I was in high school, why can’t I do the same?

I can.

And I can’t tell you how excited I am about a high school journalism program that the Anderson Independent-Mail is launching.

We told area school superintendents, high school principals and high school journalism teachers about our plans late last spring. We invited teachers from 20 high schools to one of two “J-Day” workshops in June.

We have asked each teacher to give us the names of two of their most promising students: one who is interested in news and/or features; one who is interested in sports reporting. We also are interested in budding photographers.

In July, we held a student “J-Day.” We have every intention of using these students now as part-time employees. Our stringers now include college students. Why not sharp high school journalists?

We didn’t reach nearly as many teachers and students over the summer as we had wished, so now that school is back in session, we will plan more J-Days, and forward we will march.

Our steering committee — assistant city editor Alison Newton, prep sports editor Keith Farner, reporter/columnist Charmaine Smith-Miles, photojournalist Nathan Gray and copy editor/page designer Kylie Yerka — is enthused about this initiative.

At each J-Day workshop, each steering committee member spoke about an aspect of journalism: reporting, sports writing, news writing, photography and page design, and I talked about journalism’s important role in a free, democratic society.

For teachers, this was a taste of what anyone in our newsroom can offer if we are invited into classrooms. We hope to be regular visitors.

Our motives are pure. We want to give something back to the community. We want to raise the level of high school journalism instruction and inspire students to consider majoring in journalism in college.

Ultimately, we want to produce more homegrown journalists, so when we have openings in our newsroom, we don’t have to look across the nation — or the world — for good candidates.

The editor who took a chance on me when I was in high school moved on from that newspaper — the Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune — less than two weeks after hiring me. I’ll bet he didn’t think I’d stay five years, all of the way through college. I’ll bet he never dreamed that I would come back as sports editor five years after graduating from college.

Who knows? Maybe there’s a future Independent-Mail editor enrolled in an area high school journalism class this year.