Developing a professional mentor relationship- 5 points

                                           

This school year, I began volunteering at Kindezi at Gideons Elementary School, helping facilitate their journalism enrichment program. Taking on this opportunity has been a tremendous blessing, as it’s the perfect combination of my love for kids and service, and my interest in journalism as a future career path. I’ve started developing a relationship with the program’s teacher, Ms. Jannah Bolds, who is the founder of The Bold Opinion, an independent media outlet that covers arts, politics, health and wellness, and more in Metro Atlanta. As a mentee, I’ve learned a lot from observing her facilitation of the class, and have also helped her coordinate activities, create Kahoots, and help students understand fundamental concepts in journalism, such as identifying the “who, what, when, where, and why” of a story, conducting a proper interview, and formatting a story. She has also allowed me to shadow her in her freelance work and, most recently, to write a piece for The Bold Opinion about Cobb County students protesting ICE presence and the clash between Georgia legislators and the school board (link here: https://theboldopinion.com/). I am incredibly grateful for this new mentor relationship and look forward to continuing to develop it.

(Note: The photo above is from our journalism enrichment class- I don’t have a photo with Ms. Bolds except for a group class photo, and I don’t want to post the children’s faces! If further verification is needed, please let me know who I should show the group photo to.)

-Nila Roper