9/22 Guest Speaker: Dianne Lugo

Good morning, wonderful people. Yay. All right, type in the chat. One thing you're excited about today. Good morning. Good morning. It is so nice. They have everybody here. Are you excited that it's nice and cool today? I'm excited that I get to have another cup of coffee and a little bit. Excited that it's raining, yes. I remember this is our rainy class. Yeah, this is the class where everyone loves rain. Were there any non rain lovers in this class? I think we had. Yay. Well, today, we have a special day. As I told you guys before, on Wednesdays, I am going to always try and have guest speakers that come in and talk to you guys. And this Wednesday, AKA today. I emailed people from the statesman journal that you guys had that you guys had done your little jamboard session about. Not yesterday because my computer wasn't working. But the day before that, and one of them that a lot of you guys chose is going to come in and talk to us about her intersectional identity. As well as the article and how she did. How she did her research and stuff for making sure that she had unbiased or identified her bias and was able to report on it. So sort of what reporting looks like as far as our soapstone analysis. So while we are listening to her, she'll talk a little bit about a couple of things. And you guys assignment for today is going to be, oh, here, I'll just do this link. All right. I made sort of a one pager type setup. So that you guys can just see everything that we were doing for this week. So I tried to make it more condensed and just put links on it. But I have the weekly overview and the question of the week, as well as the research that we did earlier this week, so articles, jamboard, and intersectional identity. And then I'm going to make loom tutorials for the students who can't be here while the guest speaker is here. So those will be up by noon today. But we're going to read her article in the statesman journal and a bunch of you guys chose this. So it might look familiar. And then we're going to listen to her. And then on here, he slide four, you guys are going to fill out the Google form. Oh, I'm not sharing my screen. So you don't know what I'm talking about. Here we go. I need to have one more cup of coffee before I'm fully functional. Okay. So I put the link to her article in here. There we go. It was the one about SROs being taken out of schools. And. The. Shortfall. Let me see. Latinos, unidos, CM three, doing a garden in recognition of that and then asking the school board to take the money from that they have been using for SROs and put it into different programs that would help students and specifically bipoc students or they said black and brown students, students of color. And so they want the $1 million that had been being used for having police officers, student resource officers in the schools to go towards more counselors, nurses and educators. So that's what the article was about. She interviewed a couple of the students, she interviewed a couple of the school board members and. She talked to. A bunch of different people about this. So the main thing you guys are going to be looking at here will read through this a little bit. She's going to be here in ten minutes. I'll have her come in. And the things she's going to talk about are here I can show you guys the email that I sent her. If I can find it. Okay. I asked her to talk about. Her intersectional identity and how it influences her work. How do journalists research different or multiple perspectives from a story? And then are there organizations or people that we can contact? Okay? What I'd like you guys to do is think about are there any questions as she's talking that you have for her? And if there are, and this can be anything, anything that sort of pops into your mind, okay? So we're going to be using the raise hand. Reaction. If you want to ask her a question, okay? And then finally, the Google form that everybody is filling out. This is what you guys are going to be filling out and turning in for today. So this is your exit ticket before you leave class today or actually this can be any time today. Answer the following questions. And this is all based on the state standard HS 78, which talks about how implicit bias institutional racism influenced perspectives in the understanding of history and contemporary events. So that's what we've been looking at is implicit bias. And we've been doing that soapstone analysis and looking at our own intersectional identities. That you guys made here. And one of the questions is about your intersectional identity. So if you need to get this out, take a minute and get this out for yourself, or if you have it on your computer, pull it up in one of your tabs. If you have a million tabs open, I always like close a couple of those before I start this stuff. All right. So the things you'll be listening for, the speakers name and pronouns. You're going to write your email, my cat feels the need to climb here right now. What were three pieces of her intersectional identity? Okay? She has this exact same thing. How is her identity similar to or different than yours? What is the context? So this is sort of the O, the occasion in soapstone. What happens that made these students want to have police officers out of the school, what happened to make them plant the garden, what happened to make them think that there should be more counselors and nurses and teachers. Okay? Any of those things? And then she's going to talk about some follow-up action too, who could you contact about this? All right? And this is the action part of civics in action. She's going to be talking about people who can make a difference in this. And they will probably want to hear your thoughts about this, especially in regards to the online program. What does this look like for online students, right? We don't have a police officer that's sitting in on our online classes. Or in our online school, so what does that look like for us? Or you can ask your friends who are in school. What would be the best for them? You'll write down what questions do you still have about this topic? And then at the end of the lesson, try and think about what would be something that would make this a better lesson for you. Okay. Because we're going to keep doing this on Wednesday, so I want to make it better and better. That's part of my learning experience. I'm always looking for, how can I make this better for students? So yeah. When it says email, do you mean our emo, or very comfortable? Your email. Yeah. Good question. Here, let me go back and change that. Your email. Yes. Thank you. And this is also. Oh, yeah, and Jonathan, a lot of people didn't finish the entire author intersectional identity. We said we're just like filling out as much as we can find. Okay. Your email here. I'll save it. All right. Do you want it to be our school, email? Yes, please. Yep, school email, not email. Yep. Yeah. So some people filled out an author intersectional identity chart form as Lugo. And you guys can see how much of it you got right. I'm interested to see she just sent me word document. So I'm interested to see what she has there. All right. So, before I let her in, I'd like you guys to get two things on your tabs. I'd like you to have two tabs open. Okay? The link to her article because we're going to be talking about it. I'll put it in the chat again. Okay, so you should have that up on one of your tabs, just like I do. I'm going to close out on my other ones so I can just focus in. Okay. And the other one you should have up is the Google form. And I'll put that in the chat as well. Okay. So you should have something that says exit ticket. And then this article. I'm going to put this on the screen that I'm looking at so I'm not just constantly looking at the site. I'm sort of nervous. This will be this will be fun. This is my first guest speaker. I'm excited. All right, and we'll go over. The setup for. Like our expectations. Okay? For how to interact with, I guess, speaker. All right, I'm going to let her in. Hello. Let me actually mute. Good morning. Good morning. Thanks so much for being here and our class. No, thanks for inviting me. I always like hearing people read my articles. It's not just going and avoid, you know. Totally. This is one of the things that I was most excited about having online classes was being able to have more people come in and get to the students get to act with some more people besides just me and each other. That's really great to have you here. Yeah. I was wondering if you could start out by introducing yourself a little bit. So maybe you're name and pronouns that you are, of course. Hi, everyone. I'm Diane Lugo. I'm a she her, hers pronouns. And then I'm the equity and social justice reporter here at the statesman journal. And I started back in April. So I'm going to see them. So any recommendations, feel free to nice. Where did you come from? So I'm born and raised in LA and I was living there after graduating from college and I went to Beloit college in Wisconsin. It's a very small liberal arts school. I'm from Wisconsin. So there you go. You'll hear it come out with accents eventually. Definitely. Nice. So I saw that your title was the, what was it again, social justice equity and social justice? Yes. And is that a new one? Or is that something that's been ongoing? It's brand new. So it's ongoing in the sense that every beat lately you've been wanting to change focus and it's all about intersectionality as I'm sure you guys have been talking about recently. But in and of itself so they reached out and put the position and then I applied and fortunately was able to come here and it's a beat that I've been more writing more towards. I was an intern with computers code switch. Which is a podcast podcast all about recent culture and then before that I was at a black owned newspaper in Los Angeles. So, and now I'm here. Awesome. So I thought we could go through a little bit, we have all been filling out our this was mine. Our intersectional identities for the past week. And one of the main questions that we've been asking ourselves is how does our intersectional identity create bias towards or against the how we interpret events? And so you were kind enough to share some pieces of your intersectional identity. I was wondering if you would talk us through those a little bit. I'm going to type them in on here. Everyone can see this. And this outline that we've been using in class. And then maybe you could talk a little bit about what about your identity sort of draws you to the stories that you report on. Yeah, definitely. So I was born in LA and my mom is Mexican, and then my dad, oh, sorry, I got that mixed up. My dad is Mexican and my mom is Guatemalan. And then I grew up speaking in Spanish. And then in terms of class, we were I was raised in a lower class household. Now it's more low middle class. Thanks to having a full time job. But and then so with that, I was also reads primarily Catholic. So that's a whole experience, especially also in LA. It's really different. But I talked about that when applying to the statesman and how that would help me connect with the community, especially because Salem is 20%, Latino, a lot of people speak Spanish and communities. And so that was definitely a bonus. Because what you quickly realize is that it's not that people don't have stories to tell you, it's that often you're placing barriers of yourself. So being able to speak Spanish and be able to get people more comfortable in telling these stories or things like that. So that's definitely something that has attracted me to the beat too. I remember my mom was a delivery driver and was 20 years of the Los Angeles Times newspaper. And so we would go and we would read through the paper and I would translate lots of the stories and so I've always been really connected to news just because it's a really easy way to feel more connected not only to your immediate community, but also the world and your city, your state, anything like that. And so I think it's essential to be able to share those stories and be able to connect. So that's one way at least for me that it's helped definitely. That's great. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds like a whole bunch of it's really, really interesting. And it's been really cool. Hearing student stories that's last week, too, about all of our experiences that go into either what defines us or doesn't define us. Yeah. So when you are writing this story in particular, and I noticed it was. Specific to the student resource officers. Yes. And the members of and I'm going to butcher this. I am taking Spanish and my sons and dual language immersion, but Latinos and prey. What sort of drew you to the story first of all? And then specifically that group, like how did you sort of, what research did you do to find who were the players in this event? Yeah, so I had met a few of the members before this I wrote this story. Through helping our education reporter cover school board meetings and her education beat. And so when I started when I joined the state from journal, it was a lot about, okay, who are the people who have been really active in the community that I should be aware of. And in terms of youth activism, Latinos on the emperor was a group that kept being brought up. So I introduced myself months ago and said, hey, there's a new reporter at the statesman introduced myself. And so that's how I kept connected. And then I actually was let know back in June, we're going to plant a garden and it represents this. I didn't write the story at the time. But I was like, okay, I know you planned a garden. We'll see. And then with the new school year, I knew that they were going to be doing another, they let me know, hey, we're still involved in this. We're still active in this. And so that's when I was like, okay, I think it's time to write the story and get some photos of the garden and hear what they've been talking about because it's going to be a subject that's going to be brought up in school board meetings. So that's how this story in particular came about. So it's been months of knowing that they've been doing work and now, okay, let's write a story about what they've been doing. Nice. Yeah, and we had a couple of students just come in here, so I'm going to just put that story again in the chat. Everyone, if you just got in here, this is how do you prefer to be addressed? Miss Lugo or yeah, Diana's fine too. Okay, cool. Sounds good. So this is the article she wrote that a bunch of people chose on Monday or Tuesday from the statesman journal when we were looking at authors and doing some research about intersectional identities. And then students, you guys are filling out. A exit ticket, but really it's just serve a reflection form. About our meeting today. And our first guest speaker in this class, which I was excited about. Yeah, and I just want to say the head of the high school is here as well. Do you want to introduce yourself quick to just shout out? Sure. Hi, everyone. My name is miss gimmel, and I'm one of the principals here in the edge program. And I was definitely very excited to be able to join your class today. So I could hear the guest speaker and I do want to thank you, Diane for coming today. And I want to thank the students for their participation as well. This is really cool. So thank you for being here and misses McGregor. Thank you for inviting me today. Yes, thanks for coming. I'm so great to have more people. More people here makes me a better teacher and I just love all of the different feedback that I always get. And students, by the way, as we're talking, we had said, if you have any questions, as we're going through this, feel free to click that raise hand. Reaction. And you can ask Diane questions as well. Okay? Otherwise, I'm just going to keep asking her questions because I think this is super interesting. And I had so many questions. While I was reading it after you guys chose it. Okay, so with all right, it sounds like one of your strengths is really keying into an asking around the community about who the major actors are. Miss Luca. Is there how do you, what are the next steps for follow-up? So if somebody's like, oh, els is like a great contact. What have you found to be most effective for outreach to send an email or call them or do you meet up with them? Did you go to the next school board meeting and were like, hey, this is me. Like, how did you sort of go about that next step in the process? Yeah, lately with COVID everything, it's a lot of emails and a lot of cold calls and being like leaving a message, hey, this is Diane and I want to speak to you about this or that or but usually would be inviting someone to coffee real quick and be like, hey, what are the stories that the and this is something that all the reporters at the statesman and the newsroom as a whole has been trying to be a lot more proactive in. And it's reaching out to people and being like, hey, what stories have we missed, what stories have we done really well with, is there a story that we did write that may be missed the mark? And that will change depending on who you talk to. So one community can be like, yeah, that was a great story and community be like, hey, you didn't really focus on this and that's not critiques or fine and respected because it makes you better at it. So with this story in particular, it would be the focus was on the loose activist. Not necessarily going into the nitty Gritty of a budget or going to a meeting, although we did go to the school board meeting, which are long. And I also encourage every student here to start listening to and submit comments because we're paying attention to those kind of things. And then follow up for this would be reaching out to superintendent parity or the chief operating officer who Michael wolf, yeah. It would be these are the concerns people were testifying about wanting to know this. Who, you know, can you give us a little bit more details about what they might know or know? And sometimes you don't get an answer, sometimes it's a the answer is we don't know either yet quite yet. And that's fine, but it's important to follow up and be aware of that. So that would probably be for this story. You had a couple of people that you quoted in here. Organizers, Alex, sperm and two Alex. Alex's. And are they so are they like adult community members? Are they students from the schools? They're Sandra, who is their director, I believe. And she was raised, went through Salem crisis school district, graduated recently. I can't remember if it was last year or the year before. And then the two alexs, I think one of them is still in silent Kaiser, I think. The other is also also graduated. But in terms of loose, it's a lot of use activists who are still in the ceiling crisis school district, and they've just become super involved wanting to make change within the district. And then a couple of graduates that have remained as organizers, you know, they've been through Salem Kaiser. In this case, they saw some changes, didn't see quite all the changes. So now it's how do we make it changes for the next generation kind of thing or the next graduating class. And so for this, I was able to speak with them because they went to show and you'll see the photos of them holding up science. They went to water the flowers because they're there every day taking care of this card in and so it was just trying to figure out for like a week or so. I was like, hey, I want to go take photos of this garden because it's right on commercial I think. So it's right in front of the building. So people see a random patch of sunflowers and they might be like, why is there a random patch of sunflowers in front of a sign? And so that was the angle at first. You might see flowers in front of a random building and these are the students who planted the garden. And that kind of evolved. I was able to go when they were doing that. Nice. Yeah, and I think sunflowers are such a great one, too. They grow tall and strong. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That was really cool. And then it sounds, it looks like the school board has also gotten some new members that include more people of color. Who were some of the school board members that you thought were particularly responsive. And did you reach out to all school board members or did you reach out to some in particular because of their intersectional identity? Yeah, so in that I deferred to our education reporter just because she has been at every school board meeting. She interviewed a few of them. So that's also a lot of reaching out to people when I know that, hey, you have a better connection. So I was like, okay, Natalie. Who are the Nile peas or education reporter? But for this story, it was just hearing their testimony and then seeing who responded or commented on it. In this case, I think only one of them made a really direct comment and that was Maria nosos pressy, who is quoted there. But so far in the future, and that's a type of, but in the future, it would be reaching out to her because she's obviously been a little bit more public in her comment, but it might be, you know, you said this during a school board meeting, do you have anything else to add or things like that? Yeah, nice. And then. What background did last 2020 had a ton of stuff going on. What background did give you why they specifically, there is so much stuff to focus on. Why specifically SROs in the school? Yeah, so I think it's, again, taking a more global or national perspective. You have George Floyd protests. You have a lot of conversations on policing. And then that's the thing you can see events like that and it's really distant or doesn't really relate to you perhaps as much, but then you have conversations in local districts like Salem kreiser where does policing look like for Salem and in for students that felt like policing in schools and having school resource officers that start a conversation, a conversation that they had been having for years, but got a lot more persistent with George Floyd protest and Black Lives Matter and anything like that. So that's what I came into in their conversation. I knew that they had been at the forefront of that fight and had celebrated, I think, in March was when they wouldn't be announcement was that there was no contract. And so then that's the follow-up too. Okay, they have the celebration. They have removed police officers from schools, but what next, what could that look like? And so that's what this conversation is about of exactly trying to figure out what is next. Because it doesn't just end there the story doesn't just end there. Right. Yeah, and that's something that I really appreciated about the article as well. It seems like, especially in the last year, there's been so much stuff going on. And a lot of times it's really hard to even know where to start. And so the fact that both this group as well as this article really outlined, this is what happened. We got this. We're still working on it. And this is what we want. I thought was just really, where did it say that? It was like there's a $1 million that was previously being used for. SROs and we've wanted to go towards counselors, nurses, and educators. And did they say a little bit about why specifically they thought those three groups or that. That money should go to that specific place, how that would most. Yeah, I think changed the school to prison pipeline. Yeah, I think a lot of it is having people that can relate to you, give resources, do active outreach to students. I think that's part of the big reason why. They didn't talk too specifically about it when I met with them. But I know it's just been a conversation that they've been having if you invest in resources before. It's not that our students are bad or criminals or anything that's that they need resources. And I think that's the conversation they've been having of changing the perspective or having people with the different perspectives. Immediately in their schools and that's where the symbolism comes up, like we want to grow as tall and as great as these flowers, if you invest in us, you could and so the water is that reinvestment and the flowers or what it would look like kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Symbolism is so cool. And one of the like for this class and the students, I don't know if you've noticed this, but one of the pictures that's on this class is of a plant growing. And it's because one of my favorite quotes that I have on there as well as they tried to bury us, but they didn't know we are seeds. Which is just a great one and I just really appreciate all of the thought and really. You can just tell when organizations and students, especially have really thought out all of the steps and are really good at setting this up for success because all of this too is asking, providing solutions, asking for things and really calling in people who are in power to change some things that from the way they set it up seems like it could be a possibility to change. So that's really cool. How would this compare with your experience in LA or Wisconsin? As far as schools and SROs and the changes you've seen in those other places in the last year or so. Yeah, I think it's a similar thing that's been talked about all over. I haven't covered it in LA, but I followed the coverage and also another fight of trying to get police out of there. I'm not sure about Wisconsin, but for example, my co intern that I had at NPR coach, which also has been writing about and then she took a different perspective and requested the records of how many arrests have been in public schools and who are the people that are being arrested. So that's one way to look at it too. In this fight, it's just looking at what is happening in this schools and why is this a conversation, if you're figuring out that, you know, there are resting thousands of students at the end of the school year is that because these schools are particularly permanent or is that because of you have police officers in school that kind of thing. And so yeah, I don't think it can feel like a really unique conversation, but it's not really and you can have a totally different conversation about that. But yeah, so I think it was in LA I had seen the coverage and then coming here and then hearing that they had successfully removed it. I was like, wow, okay, so it's not just happening in major school districts like LA, it's Salem is definitely a little bit smaller than LA, but it's not not having completely unique conversations. Of course, super different. So that was exciting to see how different. I don't know if it's necessarily different, but it's something that I've been covering a little bit more actively here. So I've had a different perspective of it. Totally. Yeah, we talked about a part of our cultural identity being just like the physical area that we're in or where we grew up and stuff. Yeah, and so for me, a lot of talking about Wisconsin was very much like out here, it's much more open, like you say things very directly. And there just isn't a lot of that. I don't know if you noticed that as well. It's very nice to sort of gloss over things and stuff. So even just that in the different expectations of what this looks like and stuff is really fun to think about as a part of our regional identity as well. I am going to open it up to some students and see if I haven't seen too many hands up and I realize we've been talking about a lot of stuff. Students, what is a question you can raise your hand. And ask Diane a question. Jonathan, can you say that out loud to just because that is a lot to read? Can you turn on your mic? Are you shy? Don't worry, I can read it to you. Okay, all right. So the question is if when I interview someone, do I quote and quote them later in one of my articles? Do I record them while interviewing or do you have a person next to you that is running everything down? So I usually have my phone recording and I let them know because you can get really shy if you see someone reporting or like you don't tell them it's pretty rude all of a sudden you look down and someone's been recording you. So I usually have my work phone which works as my recorder with voice memos and then I also have reporters click they notebook. So I'm usually taking notes and juggling both of them and it can get awkward but you know it's necessary just because if you're talking to someone for like 20 minutes, you don't want to go through and listen to the whole conversation again later. So you just mark down okay, I remember there's a really important quote here or someone said something really interesting that I want to focus on later. So that's what I do. And then the other question is, is there a team of people that you work with when working on this article or did you have to do everything yourself like taking pictures at any mediocre interviewing people? So in terms as a reporter usually my job is to just go ask the questions, meet the people. Which is nice because that's a lot to do in the first place. But and then we have two photographers in our newsroom and so usually we'll ask them or we'll give them assignments basically and let them know, hey, I'm going to be going to this thing or they don't have to necessarily come that same day, but it would be like, can you grab a photo of this or that? And they have their own whole process of planning for how to take photos. But so in terms of the story like this, where we want photos and we want a story, you'll see a team usually, which is our photographer, and then in this case, it was me. And then afterwards, it goes to my editor who goes and points out things that I missed, or follow-up questions, being like, you know, you mentioned the removal of SROs, when did that happen? For example, would be the one question. If I didn't mention it, or things like that. So yeah, it's a group effort. Sometimes they'll just be photos if we can't send our reporter or if it's just like, for example, we cover state fairs or fun events. Events, festivals, or things like that. And sometimes that's not necessarily something like a big reporting story, but you want fun photos. So you'll send the photographer and you'll see a little gallery on the streets and journal and that would be one thing. And then sometimes there's videos, and that's also a photographer team. And then sometimes if it's a crazy day and no one can go take photos, then also just be the photographer. But I'm not as great as that, so I try not to do it as much because I leave it to the discussions. Totally. Nice. Yeah. And guys, we ran over, if you guys all want to say thank you to Diane and fill out that exit ticket. If there are any follow-up questions that you guys have, I can send them on to her because learning never stops just with one click. And if you see at the end of that story, you'll see my email, Twitter, also my cell phone. So feel free to reach out that way if you guys have any questions. So I'm open to talking about not only the story but journalism general or questions or also I'm looking for stories all the time. So if there's something that you guys think the statesman should be paying attention to, they'll hesitate. Awesome. That sounds great. Thanks so much for your time. Yeah. Thank you, Nancy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, have a great day. You too, goodbye. Bye. You guys are the best. This was our first one. Good job, everybody. We'll continue to keep inviting people in. And if you guys have anybody that you really want to have kind of visit the class, talk with me and we can invite whoever you want. All right, have a really great day in advisory independent students. See you guys. You can stop your recording. Okay.