This class is designed around conversation, skill-building and collaboration to uplift student voice and prepare youth for a role in reporting and publications. We will analyze and evaluate media, we will learn about rights and responsibilities, we will interview and craft stories, and we will learn the basics of hard news and feature writing. We will also have unique opportunities to get coaching and training from professional journalists. Students will have the option to have their pieces be included in the student-run publication, The Headlight, throughout the course.

This class is project-driven. Students will expand their repertoire of storytelling for the media by creating podcasts, broadcasts, and other forms of digital communication. Stories may be published on our student-run publication, The Headlight. Students will also conduct career research in fields related to communication such as copy writing, freelance reporting/writing careers, and newsroom careers.

This class is for staff members of The Headlight. Students will work closely with a section editor to report on stories that they pitch, or that the editor assigns. They will seek interviews from a variety of sources within the community and report on topics and events that matter, and in doing so they will shape the voice of our school. We will have unique opportunities to meet with professional journalists, and we will practice pitching article ideas to publications both local and national.

Students will join this class to serve as section editors and managing editors and other positions of leadership for Ida B. Wells High School’s student newspaper, The Headlight. There is a level of personal responsibility, ethics and skill essential for this course since it is a student-run program. They will work in partnership with the adviser to support the newspaper staff, through organizing and coaching, and will create a website portfolio of their published writing.