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Commitment to Diversity
West High is the 10th most diverse school in the state of Iowa for the 2023-24 school year. Home to over 1800 students, we have every background you can think of. As the Editor-In-Chief for yearbook, I try to make sure that every corner of this school is covered in our book. From the band students to the ELL program, it is important to us that we are including everyone. This also goes for Wahawk Insider. I try my hardest to make sure that the people in my community are equally represented. Featuring womens sports or backing up the trans youth at my school, I do what I can to give a voice to those who have been silenced.
Recruitment
To create a publication that uncovers every corner of West High, we must pull people from each of those corners to help us. A diverse staff creates diverse content which is so important to all of us.
The recruitment process for both yearbook and Insider continues all year round for us. We do our best to show what the programs look like and interest students who want to be part of them. Through social media, we can promote the fun environments that intrigue other students.
When the applications roll around, we get really passionate about promoting the classes. We send emails, post all over social media, talk to students in journalism classes and talk with other teachers to promote the programs.
Photo by Nicole Goodman
Currently, we have over 25 students between the two programs, with various backgrounds in religion, passions, gender and sexual identities and knowledge of our school. While our programs are growing, in a school with over 1800 students, we are continuing to encourage more students to join the staff so we can accurately represent our student body.
A big way that we have promoted joining the staff is by 'bragging' about the classes. My sophomore year, I would post the fun things that we got to do within yearbook which would always get other students to ask me how they can join as well. We love to show off how much fun the class really is.
My sophomore year, one of our favorite things to do was go sell ads for the book. Every small business that we went to, we made sure to buy something to support them as they were supporting us!
Instagram post made after five yearbook editors went to Chicago for a workshop and got to enjoy the Navy Pier, a modern art museum and spend time together before the school year started.
We almost always have something going on, posting about eating cake in the middle of class or making slime draws attention to the program and encourages people to be part of the fun.
Online Coverage
Covering as much of West High as possible is very important to the staff and the school as a whole. When covering pieces for the Wahawk Insider or spreads for the yearbook, it is important to us that we include as many different groups as possible.
LGBTQ+ Students
My article, "Dear Kim, Trans Kids Are Still Kids'' discusses a bill that was proposed by Governor Kim Reynolds that had the possibility of putting trans and queer students at risk. The bill not only silenced LGBTQ+ students, but prohibited schools from educating students on AIDS and HPV.
Artist Spotlight
Going to a school that is heavily focused on athletics, it is important to cover topics other than sports. In one of my first articles, I featured Bella Deleon, a 2023 graduate who had an amazing talent for art. Deleon shared her beautiful work with me and I was able to help her become more recognized by our school. Following graduation, Deleon attended Kansas City Art Institute on a full scholarship.
Mental Health
The Mental Wellness Alliance (MWA) was a club started by peers in my grade that serves to promote positive mental health to the school and be a place for students to learn how to better themselves. MWA fought for mental health spaces in the school as well as give students information and connections to the resources we have available to us at West High.
Foreign Exchange
Sofie Mattiessen was a foreign exchange student from Denmark during my junior year. Her story inspired me as a teenage girl, and was something that I wanted to share with our school. Mattiessen was so scared to move across the world but was determined to make the most of it by immediately joining the cheer team and making friends right away.
Graphic used with permission by Belma Ikanovic
Photo By: Tyler Hall
Female Athletes
After being sanctioned my junior year, the women’s wrestling team at West still struggled to gain appreciation and respect from our school. Knowing that the male sports in our community were gaining so much more recognition pushed me to advocate for the female athletes at my school. I published articles about the cheer team, girls basketball team and girls wrestling team between the months of February and March of 2023.
Academics
The Engineering, Technology and Mechanics (ETM) Academy at West often goes unseen, so when I heard about 'Thankful Thursdays' I jumped at the chance to feature them. Denisa Sabic, a social studies teacher who was trying her hardest to get students to engage in beneficial activities while keeping them entertained during the students’ seminar time. Thankful Thursday takes place in her seminar class where students are given the opportunity to write letters to friends, staff or family and tell them how they are thankful for them.
Social Issues
A shooting in Perry, Iowa left the state in shambles as the tragedy hit close to home. In the midst of the terror, the LGBTQ+ community became a victim to hate after the shooter, Dylan Butler, was identified as a transgender activist. In a time where my home state should have been coming together to mourn losses, we were tearing apart an entire community.
Source Diversity
Getting sources outside of our comfort zones is crucial in creating articles or spreads that include as many people as possible. At times, we can sometimes set ourselves up to not get responses, but we teach all reporters that reaching out is the most important part. You have a missed opportunity for every source that you are too scared to contact.
In nearly every article I write, I do not have the first hand experience it takes to accurately tell the story. For every piece I cover or every spread I create, I talk with students, staff or community members who have real life stories to tell. Ev Wilson is one of these.
I went to school with Ev from his sophomore to senior year, and in that time I watched him grow as an activist for the trans community. When I wrote my "Dear Kim, Trans Kids Are Still Kids" article, I talked with Wilson, who had personal experience with trans hate. I gave Wilson the opportunity to put his message out there for people to hear. Wilson gave me the chance to stand up for those who needed it.
Magazine Coverage
With only one year under our belts, the Wahawk Insider began a quarterly magazine in the beginning of my senior year. With both of our magazines so far, the cover story has featured a minority student.
Our first print magazine featured African American senior Keegan Nystrom. Nystrom gained the nickname 'The Prophecy' after a middle school video of him circled social media where he claimed that he would defeat our East High rivals all four years that he played football. When we won for the fourth consecutive year, his ‘prophecy’ came true.
Our second print magazine featured Percy Batista-Pedro, a junior who joined six other families to file a federal lawsuit to stop an anti-LGBTQ+ law in Iowa. Batista-Pedro joined in the creation of a federal civil rights lawsuit that challenges Iowa bill SF 496, claiming the bill violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments as well as the Equal Access Act.
Yearbook Coverage
Yearbooks are one of the only permanent artifacts from our high school careers. One day all of our social media may not be here, but these books will. Keeping this in mind, we try our hardest to make sure that everyone is captured in the yearbook in one way or another. The yearbook program as a whole aims to be inclusive to the West High community, from including every corner of the school in the book or online, to being accessible for students.
Coverage
With a school as diverse as West High is, we strive to include as many different students as we can. As the Editor-In-Chief, I assist the yearbook staff in coordinating coverage within their spreads. From photo coverage to sources, I help to reach deep into every corner of West High. Our 2023-24 theme, This Is Us, is meant to showcase who students at West High are, and what the West High environment is like. We chose this theme because our school has so much to show, and this gives us the perfect way to do so. Each student at West High has a different background, a different story and a different passion that we want to uncover within our publications, 'This Is Us' allows us to show off each and every one of our amazing students.
Accessibility
Included in our diversity are students of different socio-economic statuses. While some schools are able to sell their books for a large price or charge for print magazines, at West High we aim to be as accessible to students as possible. With both yearbook and online publications, we try to make our publications available to all students.
Each copy of the Wahawk Insider print magazine is FREE for West High students. Funding to print the magazines come from grants, advertisements, and leftover money in our account.
Even though we wish our yearbooks could be free and given out to each student, we do not have the funds to do that. However, we do try to keep our prices low throughout the year. We communicate to students when the price of the book will increase and by how much, giving the student body plenty of time to purchase a book while they are at a comfortable price. In addition to this, to try to keep the prices of our books as affordable as we can, we switched companies to work with a smaller contract which allowed us to keep our prices as low as we could.
On top of a free magazine, students have free access to the online newspaper, Wahawk Insider. As not only a news source, but source for entertainment and opinions, the Wahawk Insider is free for all students. The Waterloo Community School District provides Chromebooks for all students and hotspots for those who need them, giving all students the ability to access the site at any time.
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