Starting the dialogue with your principal
It’s often tough, that’s for sure, but keeping the lines of communication open with your principal is vital. It may mean the difference between the sudden imposition of prior review or having the chance to explain how your students weighed the pros and cons before deciding to run that controversial article.
There’s probably no better time to start the dialogue than the beginning of the school year. Everyone is optimistic about what’s to come, full of ideas and possibilities. Sometimes the principal is even new to the building and needs to know what you and your students are all about.
With that in mind, participants at each year’s ASNE High School Journalism Institute at Kent State have written letters to take back to their principals — or to have me, as Institute director, send along with one of my own. It offers them a chance to share what they have learned in their two-week workshop and to show their administrators the value of allowing students to make the content decisions.
This year’s group included a teacher who isn’t going back to a classroom this fall. Megan Fromm, a journalism teacher and media adviser in Maryland up until this fall, was moving and wouldn’t have a staff of her own or a principal to understand the process. But Megan understands it — an alum of an award-winning newspaper program in Colorado, a new addition to the JEA Scholastic Press Rights Commission and a top-notch teacher. So…her letter for this Institute assignment is for YOU. It’s designed to be something you can tweak and adapt, if need be, or simply fill in the blanks and use for your own principal.
Thanks for the useful letter, Megan, and good luck to all who use it.
cpb
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Dear [Mr./Mrs./Dr.__insert principal name here______],
With a fresh school year upon us, I wanted to take a few moments to share my vision for [INSERT PROPER NAME/DESCRIPTION] department this year. The start of each fall brings a rush of enthusiasm from students and faculty, and I’m excited to capitalize on that momentum and take our program to even greater heights.
I believe strongly that journalism, as a discipline, embodies so many of the skills we seek to impart to our students across the curriculum. Research, writing, editing, clarity, accuracy, and critical thinking are just a few of the skills journalism emphasizes. This year, I’d like to highlight an equally important aspect of journalism—and I think you could be a tremendous resource. As educators, we all seek to provide our students the awareness, understanding and healthy skepticism necessary to compete and succeed in a democratic society. What’s more, we all hope that our students will move beyond awareness and develop a desire for civic responsiveness. That’s where you come in.
This year, I’d like to push my journalism students to think beyond the walls of the classroom. I’d like for them not only to learn critical thinking skills but also to master ethical decision-making practices they can take with them into adulthood. To do this, they’ll need to stretch their comfort levels in many ways. They’ll need to rethink what topics they cover in the student newspaper, how they approach their sources, and how they present information to our student body. They’ll need to take off their student hats more often and pick up their reporter’s notebooks, looking for stories around every corner and stopping only when they have the best, most accurate information to share.
This won’t be easy, and it won’t happen without a few stumbles along the way. But if you think this sounds like a worthwhile pursuit, I’d love to talk more about my specific ideas and the support structures I’ll have in place to make it happen in a way that is best for the students. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to working with you for another great year.
Best,
Adviser/Journalism teacher
Note: Teachers, please feel free to modify this letter as you see fit. It should reflect a tone and intent you would feel comfortable using with your principal. Also, if your school mission reflects some of the ideas presented above, adding some phrases verbatim could also be helpful in beginning a thoughtful discussion with your administration.
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What student journalists learn is essential career training
By Fern Valentine, MJE
Working on a publications staff, led by trained student editors, clearly prepares students for future careers, not just a journalism career, but any career. Employers say over and over they want to employ people with the skills students clearly learn on publications staffs.
School districts across the country are cutting journalism programs from their curriculum. They don’t realize the enhanced learning opportunity they provide.
Other districts restrict those learning opportunities because they are afraid to let students practice some of the skills employers say they want like ethics, social responsibility, self direction and leadership. Ironically, that restriction not only inhibits learning, it opens the district to greater liability.
In some states, advisers fight to retain their programs when school districts seem to emphasize only classes that “teach to the test.” Advisers need to stress that along side the obvious writing skills, publications offer unique opportunities to learn lifelong skills to help their students succeed no matter what career path they follow.
A 2006 national study provides real evidence of this correlation.
In “Are They Really Ready to Work?” employers listed clearly on page nine the applied skills they want in new entrants to the 21st Century U.S. workforce, and 100 percent of them are integral parts of a student-run publications program.
They define “applied skills” as those skills that enable new entrants –recently hired graduates from high school, two-year colleges or technical schools and four-years colleges– to use the basic knowledge acquired in school to perform in the workplace.
See http://www.p21.org/documents/FINAL_REPORT_PDF09-29-06.pdf for the full 64 page report compiled by four organizations jointly surveying over 400 employers across the United States.
The study’s findings indicate applied skills on all educational levels trump basic knowledge and skills such as Reading Comprehension and Mathematics. They say that while basic skills are still fundamental to any worker’s ability to do the job, applied skills are “very important” to succeed in the workplace.
Among the most important skills cited by employers were Oral and Written Communications, Teamwork/Collaboration, Professional/Work Ethic, and Critical Thinking/Problem Solving.
Sounds like a great journalism curriculum to me.
Other necessary skills listed were: Information Technology Application, Diversity, Leadership, Lifelong Learning/ Self Direction, Creativity/Innovation, and Ethics/ Social Responsibility.
These skills are clearly developed and strengthened in the publications classroom where student editors lead the staff.
By working as a team producing school publications, students learn practical lessons in communication and in civic responsibility. They write for an audience of their peers instead of for their teachers. They research by interview rather than just by internet searches, developing people skills not taught in other classes. They develop critical thinking skills, learn to meet deadlines, and work within a budget as part of a team.
Presenting their work in a graphically attractive manner is another unique skill practicing the very technology employers want and need.
Even more importantly, students learn first hand the civic lessons our forefathers intended when they built a free press into our democracy.
Project-based learning provided by working on a publications staff clearly prepares students for the working world. These skills are enhanced when the students themselves solve the problems and take responsibility for what they publish. The more involved they are, the more they learn.
Advisers need to stress that students learn by doing and may need to call on former students, now successful in their chosen careers, to write administrators and school board members about the importance of the unique skills they learned by working on a student-run publications staff.
Only a few members of publications staffs will seek journalistic careers, but they will all be more informed consumers of the media and understand its essential role in a democracy.
When students are allowed to work responsibly as a team with the freedom to make creative and innovative choices, they learn and practice all the applied skills employers in all fields seek in their work force.
Districts need to recognize and encourage open forum publication programs not restrict or eliminate them. Advisers need to continue to make administrators and school boards aware of the unique learning opportunities a student-run publication can provide.
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