It’s almost the end of the year and that means picking out classes for the next school year (sorry seniors!). Whether you will be starting afresh, or heading back for a second or even third year, everyone needs to make sure they are ‘journalism ready’. Here, I’m going to discuss the must haves for taking Freedom High Schools journalism class!

Know the teacher: Knowing the teacher plays a big part in taking the class. Every teacher's course is going to be different. Thankfully, there's only one journalism class here. But that doesn’t mean there’s only one teacher. Let me introduce you to Ms J! The creator of the reinvented journalism class, Ms J put together this amazing class to put in hundreds of hours of work into making the paper what it is today. Before I continue, let's all just appreciate Ms J for the work she put in!

Now, who is Ms J really? Well, Ms J is a fun and caring teacher who you sadly won't have the chance to work with as her last day is the 10th of February. But with all the hard work J has put into this class, she at least deserves an honorable mention. Now, who is willing to take over this big role? Well drum roll please….. Ms Deakin!! Now I don’t know much about her but I'm excited to get to know her teaching style. On to the next point.

Practice public speaking: A big part of journalism class is participating and speaking to everyone. So as a warning, if you aren’t comfortable with that and aren’t willing to get better, this class may not be for you. But if you are comfortable, get ready for a fun class environment and lots of class participation. We start out every morning with doing the wordle and the variations of it, we read our articles out loud for peer feedback, we help each other update our pages, etc. This class is big on help so if you’re anxious about all the work you’ll have to do dont worry, there will always be someone to help you out.

Deadlines: With every journalism class comes the deadlines. I will say, our deadlines aren’t as strict as others are, but they are on a good schedule so you’ll almost always know what we’re doing on what day. Don’t stress about it though because if you’re worried about missing a deadline then just talk to the teacher/editor chief and they can always make certain arrangements for you.

Don’t be intimidated by the workload: The amount of articles we write as a total might intimidate you but don’t be worried because we only write two articles a month and you have the entire month and class time to work on it. If you need help just ask the journalism group chat (which I'm hoping they will have next year) because everyone will be willing to help you out.

Find your writing style ahead of time: Figure out what you like to write about and your opinions on it. Knowing what you’re good at writing about will help you choose articles in the future. Of course this doesn’t mean to stick with the same type of article because it’s always good to branch out. But if you ever don’t know what to write about and aren’t feeling motivated, you can go back to what you know.

Have a notes page full of article ideas: In the beginning of every month we collect article ideas from everyone. From you, a teacher, and a peer, we put them on the board and we’re able to choose which one we want to write at the end. Having a notes page full of article ideas that you keep updated every month lets you not worry about figuring out an article to write at the last minute. I got this idea from the lovely Evie Aguirre. (Ah gear reh)

And with that, thank you to the 2023-2024 journalism class for continuing what Ms J and us started. Goodluck with your endeavors and always remember, you’re a part of a team now. Have fun journaling!