Meet the wonderful aspiring advanced journalists of Renton High School (Sherilyn Bullanday, Hanna Delele, Maizey Wheeler, and Jacob Encinas-Gutierrez) who covered a heartwarming story on December 16th, 2023 at Dimmit Middle School about Kinship Caregivers.  Kinship Caregivers are guardians of children whose parents are unable to care for them.  In this article we will delve into the feelings, challenges and thoughts of the students who took the opportunity to shed light on such an honorable topic.

Picture of RHS Advanced Journalism Students Hired by Dare2B to Cover Stories on Kinship Care Givers and Juneteenth Celebration 2024.

I asked them why they chose this story and they said, “We wanted more experience as  journalists to experience more behind the scenes of the career and be more involved in our community” (SB).

I also asked what the biggest challenges they had when making the article and they said, “I think our biggest challenge was completing the two articles in the deadline that we had, which was 1 week” (SB). Another challenge was adjusting the journalism job with our schedule. We were being journalists, students, and other social roles in our community“ (HD).

 “The challenges I faced were trying to interview everybody and get the interesting story.  I enjoyed hearing of others experience as it helped me create the article. It was also difficult getting to everyone as they all kept moving around so much, and it was hard to track who I already talked to” (JEG).  “My challenge was when my camera wasn’t cooperating. The camera was zooming in too much and the lightning wasn’t adjusting right. Learning how to work a professional camera was my biggest struggle” (MW).

Now you may be wondering how did these students do this? They did this through our journalism class at Renton High School, which is a Career Technical Education course available for all students at RHS. This opportunity lead to even more opportunities for students who take more active roles in journalism, getting them hired for paid journalism jobs outside of school and giving them a headstart to a potential journalism career.  Congratulations Sherilynn, Hanna, Maizey, and Jacob!  We are impressed with your work!