
News Brief: DACA Status Update (May 2020)
By Nicolle Berroa, age 13 DACA recipients across the United States are anxiously awaiting a decision by the Supreme Court that will ultimately decide their futures. The close to 70,000 recipients for DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), may lose the legal...

Science Brief: Endangered Sea Turtles Enjoy Quarantine
By Gibran Williams , age 8 On March 22, 97 vulnerable hawksbill turtles felt the benefit of human social distancing and ended up in the ocean instead of dying. The turtles hatched on a beach in Paulista, a town in the northeastern state of Pernambuco, Brazil. Paulo...

Science Brief: Antarctica’s Hottest day on Record
By Anneliese Smudde, age 10 On February 9, Antarctica saw its highest temperature on record at just over 69 degrees Fahrenheit, according to researchers at Comandante Ferraz Antarctic Station. This temperature broke a record heat of 63.5 degrees recorded just three...

Dakota Access Pipeline Given a Glimmer of Hope
By August Kaiser, age 10 and IndyKids Staff The Dakota Access Pipeline has been operational since May 2017, but now a federal court has ordered the U.S Army Corps of Engineers to do a full environmental review. In response to a petition to nullify federal permits,...

What Is Medicare for All?
By Dayanara Hernandez, age 15 and IndyKids staff Medicare for All is commonly thought of as being just one proposal, when in fact there are several proposals. Medicare for All is a way for all people to have the same benefits, regardless of their income or private...

School’s Out: How Coronavirus is Changing Education
By Orik Ehren, age 13 All over the world the schools of hundreds of millions of students are closed due to the coronavirus. Their educations have been moved online or, in many cases, suspended entirely. Keeping students away from school does positively...

Someday You Could Be… Sean Petty, Pediatric Emergency Room Nurse and Social Justice Warrior
By Dayanara Hernandez, age 15 Sean Petty has been a nurse for 13 years and is currently a pediatric emergency room nurse at a public hospital in the Bronx. This interview took place via email in April 2020 during the height of the coronavirus outbreak in New York...

Op-Ed: Why We Rise
by Adedayo Perkovich age 16 “It comes as a great shock to discover that the country, which is your birth place, and to which you owe your life and your identity has not in its whole system of reality involved any place for you.” — James Baldwin This year, my...

The Evolution of LGBTQ+ Rights
By Rida Ali, age 16 “Would I truly go to heaven, despite being gay?” was a question that James Guay asked himself as a young child. Guay, in an interview with Time, described how he was a victim of conversion therapy, a practice that attempts to change one’s sexuality...

Coronavirus and Xenophobia: Hate Spreads Like a Virus
By Rosell Estrella, age 10 and IndyKids Staff COVID-19 was first detected in Wuhan, China, late in 2019. The subsequent worldwide spread of the novel coronavirus has with it spread xenophobia and racism toward many people of Asian descent. President Donald Trump and...

Parker Todd, aka The Sickler
By Charles Delange, age 12 Parker Todd was diagnosed with sickle cell disease (SCD), also known as sickle cell anemia, at 3 years old. At 11, he wrote The Adventures of the Sickler, a comic intended to help other young kids struggling with illness. Now 14 years old,...

Drag Queen Story Hour Strives to Teach Kids Acceptance and Diversity
by Juan Cortes, Age 10 and IndyKids Staff Some drag queens around the United States are taking to a different kind of stage: one at the front of a public library. The Drag Queen Story Hour, which started in 2015 in San Francisco, are events which see drag queens...

Mutual Aid: Community Spirit Is Contagious
By Amedeo Max Bettauer, age 10 and IndyKids staff Tod Robbins, the founder of Utah Valley Mutual Aid, received a call from a woman speaking Spanish, a language he was rusty in and hadn’t practiced since college. But he knew from her voice that she was desperate. So he...

Sewing the Seeds of Change: Two Students Use Craftivism to Slow the Spread of Coronavirus
By Larissa Spaho, age 12, Spanish correspondent Ellie Kothari and Giulia Michieli, two 11 year old sixth-graders who attend middle school in Barcelona, Spain, had an idea. After Spain called a mandatory quarantine for its citizens, students were forced to attend...

Youth Climate Change Lawsuit Thrown Out by Federal Government
Photo by Bill Oxford By Orik Ehren, age 13 Juliana v. United States, a 2015 high-profile lawsuit which saw a group of 21 young plaintiffs accuse the United States of pursuing actions that exacerbate global warming, was dismissed on January 17, 2020. The dismissal...

Trump Rolls Back Michelle Obama’s Nutrition Guidelines Act
Fatty foods back on the menu. Photo by Wikimedia Commons By Juan Cortes, age 10 On January 17, 2020, the Trump administration rolled back the standards of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act led by Michelle Obama in 2010. New standards proposed by the Agriculture...