Pueblo West's Lucero learns from the best at national journalism and media conference

Jordan Lucero, an incoming senior at Pueblo West High School, learned from some of the biggest names in media at the 2022 Washington Journalism and Media Conference at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

White House correspondent Michael Shear, Retired C-SPAN Networks CEO Brian Lamb and Senate correspondent Savannah Behrmann were among many speakers offering their expertise at the conference from July 10-15. Among the 200 high school students at the conference, most were from the United States, but Lucero also met students from Puerto Rico and the Netherlands.

She was joined by other students from Colorado, but Lucero was the only student from Pueblo County attending the conference.

"It was incredible," she said. "We heard from people that traveled the world recording things, taking photographs of things. We heard of so many different people with different perspectives. It was amazing because we had the opportunity to share our opinions speak our voices."

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Lucero never took a journalism class prior to attending the conference, but the exceptional student with a 4.5 GPA was nominated to attend by a staff member at Pueblo West High School. While she may not have plans to enter the journalism field, Lucero said the conference helped her strengthen communication and speaking skills that will come in handy as an aspiring early childhood special education teacher.

"I've always been pretty decent at public speaking, but this conference opened my eyes to more advanced forms of public speaking. Obviously, being a teacher, you have to speak to a large group of people every day. The people I met, how fast we bonded was amazing ... that's the kind of relationship I want with the people I work with."

As a teacher among journalists, Lucero said there will moments where she felt "out of place," especially during a simulation exercise where she and other students were given a story and had to pitch it to three editors.

"I really had no experience doing anything like that, so I felt kind of out of place there," she said. "I just relied on my previous dedication to school to get me through that and it ended up going really well. My story ended up on the front page of that paper."

In the fall, Lucero will be student body president at Pueblo West High School. She served on student council and qualified for state in cross country her freshman, sophomore and junior years. She is a three-sport athlete at Pueblo West and a concurrent enrollment student taking classes at Colorado State University Pueblo.

This article originally appeared on The Pueblo Chieftain: Pueblo student attends Washington Journalism and Media Conference