Ram Batchu

Humans of Harker Editor-in-Chief Disha Gupta presents the “Humans of [Your School] workshop. Presenters highlighted HoH project’s mission and went over the process of building a senior’s profile.

Journalism staff editors led four workshops — “Humans of [Your School],” “Rethink Repeaters,” “It’s the Little Things” and “ChaRIZZmatic Communication” — at the Journalism Education Association and National Scholastic Press Association Spring convention on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Seattle Convention Center.

Humans of Harker Editors-in-Chief Sidak Sanghari (12) and Disha Gupta (11) and managing editors Aryana Bharali (12), Victoria Li (10) and Heather Wang (10) presented the “Humans of [Your School]” workshop.

They covered the HoH project’s mission: commemorating the members of each year’s graduating class. Presenters went over the process of writing a senior’s article and how to take an environmental portrait. Near the end of the session, they conducted mock interviews with seniors in the audience.

Student journalists June Baeck and Audrey Hurst attended the workshop to learn how to localize the content they publish. They enjoyed learning about the versatility of environmental portraits as well as putting together a profile. 

“I’m really glad that we came to this session — it was so impressive,” June said. “You guys are high schoolers and this is way more interesting than a lot of the presentations we saw yesterday. There’s not a single question that I have that wasn’t answered in here.”

Winged Post and Harker Aquila Editors-in-Chief Ashley Mo (11) and Eva Cheng (11) and editors Suhani Gupta (11), Sam Li (10) and Claire Tian (10) covered repeaters which are stories written following a theme and published every three to four week news cycle. They shared Harker’s repeaters like “Friday Five,” “Music Monday” and “Global Reset,” and they gave advice on how to develop and renew these ideas.

“I learned that I should start putting this into the school newspaper,” attendee Latrice Wright (11) said. “A lot that you guys do for your school like ‘Meet Your Staff Feature’ and the ‘Friday Five’ segments focus on individual people and put them out in the open.”

2024-25 Editors-in-Chief seniors Katerina Matta, Alison Yang, Chayce Milhem, Yifan Li and Victor Gong discussed the easily overlooked yet crucial aspects of leadership in “It’s the Little Things.” They explored recruiting reporters and Harker Journalism’s “cub” system where freshmen learn the basics of journalism through the Introduction to Journalism class and mentorship by upperclassmen. 

They also emphasized the importance of bonding and culture-building within the journalism staff. Through silly photos and examples, they highlighted how production nights, shout-outs, Slack communication and gratitude circles form the foundation of Harker Journalism culture.

In the last session of the day, Winged Post and Talon editors Tiffany Zhu (11), Connie Xu (11), Jasmine Hansra (11), Cynthia Xie (10), Sarah Wang (10) and Samaara Patil (10) presented “ChaRIZZmatic Communication,” echoing many sentiments from the previous workshop about the importance of communication. To conclude, the editors passed out creative printed shout-outs for attendees to take home and fill out for their fellow staff members.

Timberland High School student attendees Addie and Cate felt inspired by the leadership style of the editors presenting. 

 “I was impressed at how well all of the speakers worked together,” Addie said. “They ran the presentation really smoothly, and I was impressed at the cohesion because also there were people from the yearbook, people from [Aquila] and people from [Winged Post]. The intentionality behind the culture is really cool. I like how you guys come in two weeks early for Editors Week so that you kick off the school year with success and understanding.”

Additional reporting by Samuel Tong.