Being a member of the Tenderfoot Times, my school newspaper, has been a huge part of my life for the past four years. I’m still not quite sure what made me join, but after I made the decision, I was instantly sure of it – I even dropped Concert Band, a class that I had loved previously, in order to take it. 

Instantly, I loved the class. While I enjoyed writing, I also loved Tenderfoot because it allowed me to talk with people and connect with the Salida community. I now make sure to learn about what’s happening around town, and this has made it so I go to more community events. To write stories, I started talking to more community members, and I have learned so much about Salida that I never knew before. One year, I learned how our school board elections work because I did a story on the election. I also interviewed one of our new school board members, and I learned about what her plans and goals were for our school system. Since then, I’ve stayed more connected with the school board and the changes they have enacted. This is just one example of the multitude of ways I’ve connected more with Salida because of Tenderfoot.

I have also loved getting to express my opinions through columns. In eighth grade, I was attending online school, and alone in my house, in my tiny mountain town, I was away from all of my friends and all activities that connected me with others. I felt like I couldn’t really express myself as I was a pretty quiet kid, but that changed when I started writing columns. I could write about anything I wanted, and, since I was a better writer than talker, I could get my emotions and opinions across the way I wanted to. During my freshman year, I wrote a column about a recent friendship that ended, and it was the first time I was able to articulate my thoughts about our friendship and what happened. With time, I found that I was able to talk to my friends about these things more freely, which made my life and relationships much better. 

Before Tenderfoot, I never realized the impact that the school paper has on a community. Our local news doesn’t cover a lot of the inner workings of the school, like new teachers and minor policy changes, but for people connected to students, it’s really useful to know these things. For people in town without kids or whose kids have grown up and moved on, the paper connects them to the school district and opens lines of communication while also informing them of school activities they can come and take part in. While Tenderfoot has changed my life for the better by connecting me to the community and allowing me to express myself, it has also helped connect the community to the school, and for that I’m very proud.