The young reporters recently produced stories for the National Public Broadcasting System and recently returned from a national Chicago Journalist Convention on which they took home four awards and beat out 6,000 other student entries.

While still in high school, these young journalists already have killer resume material.

“When they leave here, they can say, ‘My work’s been featured on PBS.’ It’s just pretty cool,” said Madison High School English teacher and yearbook/newspaper advisor Nichole Stanford.

During the Supreme Court nominee hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, PBS asked Madison High School reporters to interview fellow students on the subject. The journalists were assigned to get fellow students’ opinions on the assault allegations leveled against Kavanaugh from nearly 40 years ago when he was a child still in high school — the same age many of the young reporters are now.

“They asked, ‘Should a student be held responsible as an adult for actions as a teenager?’ That one actually appeared on NewsHour Weekend,” Stanford said.

The young journalists interviewed Madison High School students Bridger Stoddard and Jared Miskin. Those interviews later appeared on PBS’s NewsHour Weekend.

Stoddard said that those accusing Kavanaugh wanted to get noticed.

“Honestly, I feel people will accuse other people to get attention. That was so long ago. People need to move on,” he said.

Stoddard also serves as the editor of the school’s “The Bobcat Beat.” He said he didn’t realize what a big deal PBS was until he was featured on it.

“At first it was no big deal. I thought, ‘No one watches PBS.’ I was wrong. A lot of people watch PBS. Everyone at work said, ‘I saw you on TV,’” he said.

Being on PBS NewsHour is apparently nothing to sneeze at.

“PBS NewsHour is seen by over four million weekly viewers and is also available online, via public radio in select markets and via podcast,” said the organization.

PBS stated that it’s continually looking to the country’s teachers to keep youth updated on community and national news. It’s also routinely asking teachers to help promote the program by having youth film segments via their Student Reporting Labs for its NewsHour.

“Passionate educators are the glue that hold this program together,” said program founder Leah Clapman. “Every year we discover new ways to expand and improve SRL with the most innovative and effective ideas coming straight from the teachers on the front lines.”

PBS asked high school journalists to also interview fellow students about the recent November elections. Student Michael Pulsipher appeared on PBS during that segment.

“They had 10 to 12 questions, and we made our own montage. They came in and took stuff from ours and made it into a national one,” Stanford said.

It proved a huge honor for her young journalists to be featured not once but twice on PBS within a matter of weeks, she said.

“That was pretty cool. They had over 300 interviews submitted. There were kids from Hawaii, California, North Carolina and Ohio. We articulated what we were thinking. Our video was good quality. We had sound and lighting. The technical part was really good,” Standford said. “If my kids can come out of here knowing those technical details, it gives them a heads up.”

Stanford connected with PBS last year after the organization contacted her about its SRLs.

“PBS is trying to get a little bit more of a youth voice. I worked with the Journalism Education Association and Idaho Public Television. National PBS works through Idaho Public Television to find schools,” she said.

Officials later submitted her name to the national PBS organization that later contacted her about having her students participate.

“I got a call from them. We talked about it and decided it was probably going to be beneficial for both us and them,” she said.

Last year, Stanford visited PBS offices in Washington D.C. where she met with PBS NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff.

“I went back and got training on how to become a Student Reporting Lab. You have to know how to teach broadcasting and how to tell the story. That’s kind of their focus — teaching students how to share their stories,” she said.

So why did PBS pick Madison High School journalists?

“Because we’re awesome,” she said.

PBS is asking the young journalists to provide two stories per school year. It also plans to request the reporters to interview youth for breaking news like the Kavanaugh hearings.

In exchange, PBS plans to send Stanford supplemental video tutorials and other instruction on how to produce a television segment.

“They’ve sent us (tutorials) on ‘This is the best way to get the shot.’ ‘This is how your lighting should look.’ They are little tutorials the kids can watch to show examples of what they’re looking for,” Stanford said.

PBS also provides critiques on what the students have done so far and what they can do to improve for future reports.

“We work with a guy who said, ‘You’re not (using) the rule of thirds.’ ‘You should have taped his mike under his shirt; it was kind of distracting.’ ‘Be careful with the lights and glasses.’ He gives them great feedback,” she said.

For now, students plan to work on an upcoming news story about the opportunities available for students at the high school. A story, planned for May, will feature a female student who is the FFA president and is also involved in the school’s advanced photography program.

“She’s pretty well-rounded and has taken advantage of a lot of things,” Stanford said.

In the meantime, the young reporters are working to create shot lists, storyboards and what’s called B-rolls for the upcoming segment on the young woman.

“The B-roll is the extra footage. Once she’s talking, she just won’t sit there and we watch her talk. She’s doing something,” she said.

Those watching would see the young woman actively doing something like tending to animals while her voice is overheard.

“They’re doing the whole shebang,” Stanford said of her students. “They’ve picked right up on it.”

When Stanford first told her students about the PBS opportunity, they didn’t know about its news division.

“At first they said, ‘What are you talking about?’ They thought of ‘Clifford the Big Red Dog’ and ‘Sesame Street’,” she said.

Students’ perceptions quickly changed once they started filming for PBS and saw themselves featured on the organization’s NewsHour.

“Number one, they’ve talked about a lot of national news, and they’ve got to see themselves on television. Their work has been chosen. Number two, their opinions matter as much as the kids from Hawaii and the kids from California does. They have value that they can give to the community,” Stanford said.

About a dozen youth make up Stanford’s journalism and broadcast classes. Stanford says she loves working with her students and is especially proud of their success at the Chicago Journalism Convention. There, Madison High School reporters received awards for video editing, writing, news writing and basic photography.

“It was pretty cool. It shows we’re doing something right,” she said.

All these recent opportunities have shown students that they are capable of doing many great things now as well as following graduation.

“It’s been good. It’s opened their eyes to what careers are out there that they’ve never really thought about. They’ve seen that for every television anchor, there are 25 people behind the scene,” she said. “They all have to have their own blogs. They all write. They are all taking photos. When they leave here, they’ll be able to tell the whole story from beginning to end.”

For more information on the Madison High School journalists’ work for PBS, visit http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/daily-videos/students-react-dr-christine-blasey-ford-and-supreme-court-nominee-brett-kavanaugh/.