The importance of student journalism | Lillee Sheckles | TEDxBrown County Schools
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GNI9TQ2cvM Video ID: 1GNI9TQ2cvM ============================================================ Transcriber: Kamila Niemotko Reviewer: leena qarzai All right, let's give it up one more time for Ethan Marshall, ladies and gentlemen. All right. Our next speaker is someone that is truly inspiring, especially for those that believe in the power of storytelling. She's a senior at Brown County High School and has a deep passion for practicing accurate, passionate, and inclusive storytelling through student journalism programs. She believes that media classes has the power to change minds, hearts, and change schools for the better. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome with her talk titled 'You Hold the Remote. The Importance of Journalism in Schools'. Lily Sheckles. I am here today to ask a simple question. What would a student's life look like with a journalism class? For me, it was a life altering experience. It increased my knowledge of grammar and I was able to gain a better social skill. a better social skill. I'm able to show confidence in an interview, whether that be in person or through an email, and I finally had the chance to have a say in something that I write. Nothing felt like an assignment to me. I was simply just having fun. Journalism has been my passion since I was a sophomore in high school. Imagine a little 16 year old me investing her life in a biomedical class because that's all I knew. With my mom and sister going to school to be nurses, it was just what I thought would come next for me. Until I had to take the yearbook class for a fine art credit. And that's when I knew journalism was what I wanted to do. And now, here I am today to express that passion, to show just why I took the remote control in life and press play on my future in journalism, and hopefully to show you why you should care about it too. When I did some research, I came across a study created by the Newspaper Association of America that shows 20% of 31,700 175 students have taken a journalism class. The results concluded a significant difference between the ACT test scores of students who had journalism experience and those who didn't. In a world where all schools offer journalism classes, students would be more academically inclined with their writing skills, communication skills, self-confidence, and their ability to create a personalized and creative story. As you can see, the dark green is the students who have journalism experience and their scores are higher than those who didn't. So what does this say about journalism in schools? To me, it's something that helped a student finally find her passion and gave her something to be excited about; but it also helped students academically and their test scores. It increases their knowledge in so many different ways. When it comes to journalism in schools, it's a highly undervalued class because it may seem like your English classes will teach the same things, but that's not always the case. I never had to sit in front of another person and interview them, and I never got to have a say in the things that I had to write. But with my journalism class, I do. And that's not to say English isn't necessary, because it's literally the first step needed when writing a journalism story. So it's nice to have classes that play into each other rather than against each other. Where English teaches formal grammar, journalism spends it to give it a media feel. English teaches us how to write all the nonfiction and fiction genres and books, and journalism is how to write the real facts and news. With English, you get essays, and in journalism you get newspapers. So while they are different, we wouldn't have journalism if we didn't have English. So now let me take you through what we can call the soft skills of journalism. In journalism, one of the most crucial forms of communication is through email. Whether it's an interview I'm not able to do in person, or just communication back and forth with my editors and internship advisor, I always say I send more emails in a day than I do texts. And I'm only 18 years old. So it's very important to have the skills to write a strong and formal email. The first thing I do in an email is I greet the recipient and make a clear introduction of who I am, what I'm emailing for, and why I wanted to do an interview. So now take the skills you learn about a formal email and put that into what it would look like to have to use it in the adult world. You may need to write a professional email for your job in college. Emails can be super helpful with communication. Your communicating with your professors and getting references, and maybe scheduling an interview where you want to seem professional because first impressions do matter. Another one of the soft skills that are valuable in life is time management. Time and deadlines are super important when it comes to journalism. If you're writing for a newspaper, creating a yearbook spread, or planning an interview, it all comes down to a deadline. I have a deadline every every Thursday, and I need to have my story sent to my editors before noon. If I don't get that story in, I don't have a feature for the next week. Not only would that inconvenience my editors, but I have to think about the time I put into planning all my future stories, and how I have to push everything back. May 10th is the deadline for all year book spreads to be done. If they're not done, they won't get published. Then that's a waste of all the students and parents who paid a pretty penny for an unfinished book. I make sure to plan interviews a week in advance to help spread out the time frame between when I get the answers to write the story, to when I actually write the story. So that's why there's no conflict between those times. So now take this and think about a work paper. You don't want to submit that late, or an essay for college, or even just a piece of homework. This skill is so important in life and yet can be learned in a yearbook class. I will always say yearbook class is one of my favorite classes, and language arts is one of my best classes. The reason yearbook is my favorite class is because of the freedom I have when I'm creating a page, writing a story, or creating questions for a sidebar, it's by far the most relaxing and freeing experience I have ever had. And it's all because it's my choice. It's my page, it's my ideas, and it's my name in the byline. If you can't tell by now, I am referencing another soft journalism skill. Having the ability to create something in your own words is an amazing skill to utilize in life. I want you to think about when a teacher told you not to copy off somebody. I'm betting they told you to use your own words. That's exactly what this is. The ability to use your own words. In an essay, you're not gonna copy off someone on a report based on your knowledge. You're not going to ask your coworkers for the answer. So having this skill will help you when it comes to writing things that involve your own words. I believe that one of the most amazing things about journalism is all the different career paths it offers within itself. You first you have graphic design. A graphic designer is someone who creates a visual concept like logos or advertisements. Then you have your photographers, which in all honesty could be a whole speech in itself. You have wedding photographers, sports photographers, fashion, portrait, wildlife and so many more. From there, we now have social media. And yes, social media is a very important form of journalism because not everybody looks for the newspaper anymore. So journalism has to be accessible to everyone, including social media users, marketing, taking a journalist spin on distributing a brand's content, and finally, yearbook. Whether that be taking it as a student or teaching it, it's the ability to create a book of memories made just for your high school. So just take a minute to break this down with me. We have journalism. Then within journalism, we have a plethora of different skills and career paths, all made up into small things. That's five and more career paths schools look right over. As I mentioned, journalism is not for everyone, but it could be for a lot more students if it was even an option in schools. Now, you've heard me talk about my deadlines, interviews, and how journalism is in fact for me. And the reason why is because I had the amazing opportunity to intern with our local Brown County newspaper and have learned the ropes of journalism before I even take my step into college. Have you guys ever seen those TikTok Get Ready with me videos? If you have, I thought, how fun would it be to write a story with me? So the first thing I think about when writing a story is what do I want to write about? Typically, for my stories, I keep my ideas close to Brown County. So today I'm going to write about Brown County High School students having their first TEDed practice speech. I then go on to plan my interview, what I want to ask and when do I even send the email? And then I mentioned my who, what, when and where or who, what, when and where and why. Here are some things I'd like to point out in my story. Paragraphs are different when it comes to journalistic writing, because you can create an entire paragraph with just one sentence. It's pretty amazing. Then you also have to do your interviews in past tense. So when I read my story, you'll notice I say she added instead of she said. My story reads Brown County High School. TEDed had students prepared their first ever speech practice on Monday, April 15th with a BCHS TEDed luncheon. The event allowed the TEDed club members to bring family and friends to hear first hand the speeches they have created on topics they are most passionate about. With the big TEDx event coming up on May 18th, 2024, it's important for the students to gain experience of giving their speech in front of others while also getting to know what they want to say and how they say it. This event was planned out by BCHS English teachers and heads of the TEDed club, Cassandra Pontius and Amanda Condra. "I think it's really important to practice now instead of later," said BCHS senior and TEDed member Lily Sheckles. "I think it's a great opportunity, and I'm very excited and grateful to have amazing teachers who plan these to help better us students" she added. BCHS TEDed members are looking forward to the Brown County TEDx event, so be sure to join us at the Brown County Music Center on May 18th. So to end my talk, I want to recap with you the world of journalism. In a student's life, you have social skills, formal email writing, different career paths all wrapped up into one thing: journalism.