How teachers and students feel about Bulldogbugle

Nathalia Garcia

The landing page of AJMS website Bulldogbugle.com.

I interviewed students and teachers at AJMS about how they feel about the school website, Bulldog Bugle.com. This includes teachers who have heard about it and have even had stories about them uploaded to the website, as well as students who work on the website in the investigations class and others who go on it to explore it and learn new things.

I first asked Jaqueline Alamilla and Gabriela Briseño, teachers at JMS, how they feel about the website and their opinions on students being the ones who upload stories to it.

Science Teacher Jaqueline Alamilla tells us, “I think it’s really cool that students get to write stories on different things, but I think my favorite part is that there’s like a collection of past students so you can see stories from before. Plus, it also allows students to be their own journalist. I think the editors also have a pretty cool responsibility to take on. I like it and it’s interesting that there’s also stories about me from way before.”

English teacher Gabriela Briseño tells us a little more. She said, “I think it’s great. I think it’s really important to hear student voices because most of the time we hear a lot of adult voices.  I think that’s why we won an award nationally because a lot of middle schools don’t have their own blog so we don’t really hear from your age group. Bulldog Bugle is really different. It’s important to hear what you guys think too. It helps you guys become better writers. And it encourages us to continue doing this as a school.”

Two investigations students tell us more what it’s like to work on Bulldog Bugle, coming from a journalist’s perspective, and what they think and feel about Bulldog Bugle.

Ashlie Gomez said, “I don’t really like interviewing people because I feel like I get really awkward but it’s not that difficult to type out stories. It’s pretty easy once you have everything, all your interviews finished and stuff, and you just need to type them out.”

Jaylah Everett added, “It’s a good way for us to communicate and I like to hear other people’s stories and what they have to say.”

I lastly interviewed a student who doesn’t have an investigations class and just mostly looks around and explores the Bulldog Bugle page to see what his classmates and friends have posted.

Angel Valenzuela told us that, as a student that doesn’t work on the website, “As a student that doesn’t have classes that you have to post on Bulldog Bugle and only sees the website during classes or at home, I feel like it’s cool to look at those stories because they are interesting sometimes.”