![Adding a tray of canned corn to the pile, junior Michael Collop assists in transporting donations for the Holiday Food Drive. The event, hosted schoolwide from Dec. 10-17, raised over 5,000 food items to deliver to the Parkway Food Pantry, helping several families in need. [The drive] is a great thing for us to do because you're giving to those who are less fortunate, and it helps provide for people who can't provide for themselves. [The] competition is always fun, too. It was fun to be in [social studies teacher Jess] Chazen’s class, because he always gets worked up over [the competition]. He made it exciting, and was always convincing us to turn in cans for the drive,” Collop said.](https://bestofsno.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/feature-photo-unsung-2.png)
![NEW CHALLENGE, NEW TEAM MEMBERS: Every season, VEX creates a new game that robotics team members are faced with and have to build a robot to compete in. This year’s game forces students to create a robot that is able to stack rings onto mobile goals in order to score points. The change in games each season is something that robotics teacher Audrea Moyers appreciates.
“One of the things that I like about VEX is that they have a new problem to solve every year,” she said. ¨Even though the equipment’s the same, they have to analyze the game, and they have to come up with solutions that are unique that year. They are using their knowledge from prior years, but they have to kind of redesign a problem.”
As returning teams were faced a new game, some new teams and members had to adapt to a uncommon playing field and game.
“Three of our four teams were competing for the first time this year, and they had very different experiences match to match, so I think they learned a lot,¨ she said. ¨It’s hard just watching a video online to know how it’s actually going to be in person, so they all learned a lot about what gameplay is like, how to work with an alliance partner [and] how to adapt during the day to changes.”](https://bestofsno.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/IMG_9283-1-1200x800.jpg)
Supporting trans teens: video reporting from national summer workshop
This past June, I attended the PBS SRL Summer Broadcast Academy where I produced my own news package about the transgender youth community.
Alice Scott
September 21, 2021
Last spring, I was selected as a fellow for the PBS Student Reporting Labs yearly Summer Broadcast Academy — an opportunity to spend two weeks in June working with and learning from the PBS team and other industry professionals about video storytelling, production, and journalism.
Each year, schools across the country partner with PBS through their SRL program to create a network of student journalists who tell stories through broadcasting and digital media.
During my time in the Academy, I gained new knowledge of the world of broadcast journalism and improved my videography skills while also producing a five minute video news package. Our assignment for the academy was to create a newsworthy, youth-driven story that was relevant to our community.
The story I told was the personal experiences of coming out as transgender for Jake Waggoner, a rising freshman at McCallum High School, and Wednesday Gomez, a rising sophomore at The Academy of Thought and Industry. I wanted to share their experiences in a way that would allow others to learn the value of supporting transgender youth.
To tell their stories, I conducted extensive interviews with both Wednesday and Jake and their families. After speaking with their families, I spent time shadowing them in their homes to capture authentic moments in their daily routine. My goal was to share their life through clips and images while telling a much deeper story about how gender plays a role in teens’ identity shaping and self-discovery.
The story was meant to inform my community and increase visibility of young people finding who they are and developing their gender identities. The end result was a piece that shared personal stories of transgender youth from Austin, Texas, in a way that also detailed how friends, families, and strangers can help support and respect these individuals.
This story was originally published on The Shield Online on August 10, 2021.
