Leadership and Team Building

Adapting as a Leader

My diverse experience in different mediums of journalism  have enabled me to adapt my leadership style in accordance with the particular set of students I work with. Leadership should be dynamic in that it changes from group to group. As my role changes, so too does my leadership style.

While serving as one of the three active editorial board members my junior year,  one of our primary goals, was to increase production of quality stories while focusing on more diverse and in depth coverage. With nine full time writers, we had a small but incredibly skilled staff. The experience of the writers, combined with the shared leadership, made my role as an editor very task oriented. While the editors led pitch days and club meetings, a large portion of our time was spent editing stories, publishing stories, designing pages for stories, or posting on social media about our stories. 

At this time, I had adopted somewhat of a pace setting leadership style. Expectations were set by the editorial board and advisors, and expectations were met with limited friction. We all had a shared understanding of what we wanted for the publication and as editors we rarely felt the need to explicitly reinforce those expectations. Instead, we implicitly maintained these goals through leading by example.

 I think the most impactful leadership quality I have maintained, regardless of the situation, is my devotion to leading by example. I emulate this through my effective communication with all staff members and promoting team building initiatives.  I consistently seek opportunities to write stories and work in the lab for hours after school. Just as people don't want to work towards something they aren't passionate about, people don't want to be led by someone who isn't passionate about all aspects of what they are doing.

Going Beyond the Puff-Pieces

I feel that often within the world of student journalism we tend to put too much emphasis on the "student" part of our job title. As a result, we are scared to ruffle feathers and avoid covering sensitive topics.  This  was the case prior to last year when our editorial staff decided to address this issue head on

With our Fall 2023 magazine, we wanted to fully embrace this newly established mission. The start of the school year had seen major changes in administration and shifts in policy, but most of all, there seemed to be a seemingly negative shift in student culture . Rather than glossing over these topics , we decided to dedicate this issue to addressing student concerns.

We started by asking everyone on staff,  "What is an issue at York that matters to you?"  Their responses led us to investigate these topics that were important to the student body.   The Fall issue featured pieces on disparity in athlete recognition, a negative shift in school culture, and an editorial about recognizing diversity at York. 

At the time, this editorial on diversity was a big risk due to the sensitive subject matter. The article was prompted by the recognition that while York has always been a predominantly white high school, there had been a perceived increase in blatant and exclusionary rhetoric to define it as such.  Addressing this concern as a predominantly white  staff was difficult, but by speaking with leaders of culture based clubs and researching, we created an editorial that served as a message to the student body and a mission statement for our publication.

Since that publication, we continued to publish pieces that pushed people out of their comfort zone. We published an expose on recycling  practices at York, articles about chronic truancy and dress codes, and a piece that highlighted the significance of the V-Day movement. Our goal was not to provoke senseless conflict, rather, we hoped our writing would promote conversation and awareness.

Over the past two years, I have continued to find those unique stories that highlight diverse experiences. I wrote about  Justin, a student with Dwarfism who has been an equipment manager for the Chicago Wolves AHL team and now lends his expertise to the school hockey program. Later I wrote a story about Pepe, who immigrated here from Peru and became the first member of the English Learners program to perform in our school's Fine Arts Week. This fall, I interviewed members of the Special Olympics Basketball Team to share how they have grown as athletes and individuals. Through telling these stories I am able to explore perspectives that interest me and shed light on school groups that may go unrepresented otherwise.