Personal Narrative

Journalism was not love at first sight. In fact, I hated it.

The rigid rules and deadlines. Those annoying, quirky AP style standards. For my very first article, I did everything you could do wrong. I emailed questions ahead of the interview, forgot to record the interview, and wrote with heavy bias in almost every sentence of the article. My editors took one look and decided to scrap my story when everyone else seemed to be doing fine.

Flushed red, I wanted to quit. But I refused. Maybe it was pride. Maybe it was the stubbornness in me that wanted to make my voice heard. 

So I stayed. I filled notebooks with neatly written questions, memorized intros before every interview, and rehearsed in the mirror. I stuck to my list of questions. Anything else would be the same muddled mess as my first article. 

Yet, inside, I felt empty. Is this really what journalism is about?

While I was still trying to find my footing in journalism, I met Elizabeth Zielinski, Chair of the Advisory Committee for Students with Disabilities in my school district. I had scheduled an interview for a story about pandemic learning losses for students with disabilities. Inside a flashy building where adults spoke in acronyms and riddles, I sat through a meeting with all the information I had painstakingly researched: 311 meetings completed, compensatory services funded, and students receiving support they had been denied. 

Still, I doubted myself. What right did I have to write about a room full of adults discussing equity, policy, and law? What if I make a fool out of myself?

Later, when we sat down together for an interview, I recited my lines dutifully. But her responses? Infectious. A simple question on her role became the story of her sons, the reason she fights for inclusion, and students being locked in closets to the brink of death. I found myself leaning in and asking my first question off-script. Then another. And another.

The interview became a conversation, the first real one I’d ever had as a reporter.

When I said “students with special needs,” she put her hand up to pause me. These students don’t have special needs. They have the same needs as everyone: to be respected, loved, accepted, and educated.

At that moment, it hit me that I’d been so disconnected from the story I was writing. Journalism isn’t about me; it never is. It’s about others: her and the hundreds of students and families she fights for. I’d been so set on perfecting my article that I’d completely forgotten.

From then on, my voice started to fade, letting others take over. When covering Fairfax County’s first collective bargaining agreement in decades, I stayed up late replaying their exhaustion from 2:30 am meetings, struck by their determination to improve working conditions. When featuring a teacher running Ironmans to understand her struggling students, I felt her raw desire to understand. I started to feel small in the best way possible, becoming a vessel, not a star.

From time to time, I get a “thank you for telling my story” from the people I interview. In those moments, the late nights in the newsroom consuming ungodly amounts of chip bags while editing, refocusing my camera in an awkward position for the shot, and hours combing through pages of school board meetings… don’t seem so bad.

This year, a new staffer asked me for help with her article. At times like these, I keep my first unpublished article in mind, the one full of mistakes that made me feel like my voice was not heard. So I didn’t just answer the one question she had for me. I patiently explained AP style rules, proper transitions, and tips to minimize bias. But I also tried to “infect” her with my love for storytelling and curiosity about every interviewee. I encouraged her to plan questions, but be willing to lean in like I had. She nodded when I did, eyes lighting up with a look I wish I had felt three years ago. Later, I received this exact text:

“i would love it if i could count on u in the future as someone i can talk to and grow closer to…i don’t have anyone older than me for advice :)”

That made my day. Scratch that, my whole month. Maybe, in some small way, I became her Elizabeth Zielinski, someone who opened her eyes. She experienced taking someone’s heartbeat and putting it into words through her article. That’s why I enjoy making tedious slideshows on “Interviewing tips!” and “Photography 101.”  I let my staffers design the pages of their articles, even if they’re not editors, and pin them on a board. Our state and national recognitions only happen because of the community of people I work with every day in my classroom – my Room 228.

The same sense of responsibility pushes me beyond Room 228. If guiding one staffer can create so many sparks, what about all the stories that were never told? Across Virginia, student journalists face censorship.

That’s why I started connecting student journalists across the state through the New Voices Movement. Our goal is to have a bill passed so that Virginia follows the legal standard for students’ freedom of speech from Tinker v. Des Moines, rather than the legal standard from Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier, which restricted that freedom. Students should never be stripped of their First Amendment rights “at the schoolhouse gate.” There’s much work to be done – not just for student reporters now, but all in the future.

After all, a journalist’s purpose isn’t about making their own voice heard – it’s to make sure others' voices are heard.