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COMMITMENT TO DIVERSITY
As Editor-in-Chief of a publication that represents a majority minority school, it is of the upmost importance to me that our program accurately and consistently represents our student body. Moving forward, I want to continuously put diversity and inclusion at the forefront of what I do and make choices based on the people I am making the choices for.
DIVERSITY STATEMENT
This year, our EdBoard decided that we needed to create a diversity statement for our publication. We have many policies that we adhere to as a staff and we do a lot of work with identifying our weak areas in terms of diversity of coverage and staff makeup, but we realized that we didn't have a policy specifically dedicated to diversity.
We met during one of our Leadership Seminars to determine a plan for writing our policy, splitting it up into four distinction sections: diversity of sources, coverage, recruitment, and marketing. After dividing up the workload, we each worked to write parts of each section, and then peer edited the final version. We hope to publish this statement on our website and in our magazines soon. Click on the image to read the ODYSSEY Media Group's Diversity Statement.
REPRESENTATION AUDIT
At the end of each cycle, each member of the ODYSSEY staff fills out a form with the name of each stakeholder they interviewed during the cycle. They include their name, pronouns, race, how they identify ethnically, how prominent they were in their story, and whether or not they completed a thank you note for the stakeholder.
After everyone fills out the form, our Leadership Team goes through and reviews all of the information, evaluating how we did on truly representing our student body and where we can improve in the future. This process is super crucial for our staff, because our main goal is to accurately represent our community, and by analyzing our information each cycle, we can gauge whether or not we are actually doing so.
VISITING FEEDER MIDDLE SCHOOLS
Last year, I was able to go to one of our school's feeder middle schools to talk to the eighth graders about journalism and the ODYSSEY program during their investigative journalism unit. We were able to give presentations on what ODYSSEY is, how we operate, and how they could get involved as high schoolers in the coming years, as well as read over their pieces and provide feedback.
I included this in my Commitment to Diversity section because our main goal in visiting the middle schools was to reach out and make ODYSSEY accessible for anyone and everyone. We didn't want our program to feel exclusive or like it was only meant for kids who maybe are on different academic pathways, and we were able to speak with every eighth grade ELA class about our program. We are also planning to go back again this year, later this month to speak with the next group of kids!
HoPE CLUB STORY
During one of our TOP projects my sophomore year, our prompt was to report on an organization within our school community that was working to create positive, inclusive spaces for kids. My group chose to report on the HoPE (Hispanic Organization Promoting Education) Club, an organization that works to help students develop leadership skills and provides community service opportunities.
I thoroughly enjoyed getting to interview members of the club and observe how they work to provide students with valuable resources, and in doing so, I feel we were able to highlight the actions of those who are actively doing great work at our school. Click on the photo to read the full published story!
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