SAN FRANCISCO — Humans of Harker managing editors Heather Wang (11), Victoria Li (11) and TALON sports and photo editor Samaara Patil (11) presented “Humans of [Your School]” at JEA NorCal Media Day at Archbishop Riordan High School today.
They explained the mission of Humans of Harker: to honor the legacy of every senior in the class, highlighting their diverse interests and experiences. Additionally, they highlighted and gave examples of the components of an HoH, including the personalized article, environmental portrait and senior quote.
“I wanted to share this project with other schools because Humans of Harker is meaningful and my favorite part of Harker Journalism,” Heather said. “Humans of Harker gives us a chance to spotlight each senior who may not usually be in our regular coverage. Usually when we’re covering people, we are talking about the people and more focused on that hobby than the person. But with Humans of Harker, we really get to see who the senior truly is.”
The team emphasized the importance of an organized schedule to manage staff members through deadlines. They explained how each feature is published on multiple platforms like Aquila, Instagram and the print magazine.
First year staff member for the Epic at Lynbrook High School Katie Shang was excited to see the special features of other publications and gain inspiration for the Epic.

“I could see that other schools, especially in the Bay, have a lot of different and diverse parts that they put in their publications,” Katie said. “It’s really cool to see that because it gave me an insight.”
Kensie Pao, editor-in-chief of Palo Alto High School’s Verde magazine, attended the presentation in hopes of learning how to implement a Humans-of-PALY publication at her school.
“I definitely understand a lot more on how to make this feasible,” Kensie said. “I also learned how difficult this is actually going to be, and there’s a lot of takeaways from the presentation. I was very impressed by the different environmental portraits, and that’s something that I’m going to try to push for.”