Savannah Athy-Sedbrook | STUDENT JOURNALIST
News & News-Features
As a sophomore on staff, I learned about the changes that would soon be effecting our community recycling program. It was becoming increasingly expensive to pay for separate trash and recycling, so the city would soon stop providing the recycling service. I took on the responsibility of informing our community on why. However, doing so meant talking to people in the town who could be considered intimidating, such as the mayor, Mike Rawlings, and other city workers. As daunting as it was, this was an important story to me, one that I felt could make an impact.
Augusta's recycling changes in 2020
Over a year after taking the PSAT, senior Forrest Tushhoff was named a National Merit Scholar semifinalist. The news spread quickly throughout the school, and the same day when my Editor-in-Chief walked up to me and asked me to write this story in a little over 24 hours, students had already heard about it. Writing this story was not about telling our audience about his success, it was about making it personal. I focused on his childhood and the way his upbringing helped him along this path. How did he become the person he is today? What goals does he have in life? How did the work he put in the last few years help him achieve this honor?
Tuschhoff named National Merit Scholar semifinalist
One of my best friends sophomore year was in the Special Education program. When we talked, he expressed irritation at the way he was treated in class simply because he required extra help. I struggled while writing this story because I wanted to give the students an opportunity to speak out and make their voices heard, but I quickly realized how hard it was for them to say anything against their teachers. We considered using anonymous sources, but in the end decided to change the angle so they felt comfortable talking to me. It ended up being a really good story and I was able to make a small breakthrough in their environment by making them feel heard.
Special education students lack feeling of acceptance
Reporting includes keeping an ear out for the stories happening around school. When a sophomore on the dance team went to Rome for the New Year's parade, I knew I had to write about it. This story was a sequel to a story written before her trip which talked about why she was going and how excited she was. This story focused on her experiences while overseas and all the places she experienced. No one else in the school could say they had been to Rome, so I included all kinds of small details to transport the readers to the trip with her. It was a lot of fun to write, and I enjoyed interviewing her about all the sights she saw and people she met.
Sophomore travels to Rome for performance
In the midst of winter weather where the temperatures were consistently below freezing, I wrote about why the weather was as extreme as it was. I had recently begun my Girl Scout Gold Award and was leaning about the effects of climate change on the weather myself. It was interesting to me how the global temperatures could have an impact on how cold or hot it was in little Augusta, Kansas. Specifically, it was not only the cause of the extreme hot, but the extreme cold. I used sources such as The Climate Center and National Geographic to inform my readers with reliable information.