Start 2022 with a scholastic press rights refresh
by Sarah Nichols, JEA president, MJE
The first few weeks of a new semester provide an important reset or blank slate. After a challenging fall for advisers, your goal may be to revisit scholastic press rights topics and do more with law and ethics training, especially if the past few months of reteaching and rebuilding called for massive shifts in your curriculum.*
Or maybe January marks the start of a new journalism course entirely, so you’re set to meet a new crop of students and want to begin on building awareness of First Amendment issues and support for student press freedom from the beginning.
In any case, it’s always a good time to include more law and ethics in your journalism program. Here are some ideas for how to start 2022 with attention toward scholastic press rights education.
- Follow the news. Begin with the wonderful news of New Jersey becoming the 15th state to enact specific press rights legislation. The passage of S108 hit right as many schools adjourned for winter break, so this is a great time to discuss it in class. If students haven’t learned about New Voices yet, now is the perfect time.
Key questions: Do students know what press rights protection they have based on where you live? Are you in a state working toward New Voices legislation? Are there ways your students can participate?
For balance, take a look next at this (possibly still-unfolding) not-wonderful news in Colorado.
Key questions: How do you feel after reading the student’s op-ed and the news article about what happened? Why? When it comes to student press freedom, do your students know the differences between public and private schools? If your program operates in a state with legal protection, do your students know what to do if they feel their rights have been violated? Do they know about the JEA’s Panic Button from the Scholastic Press Rights Committee? After reading about the situation at Regis Jesuit, do your students feel called to action somehow? Is this something to write about or explore further?
- Plan for remote learning. Make use of online resources, either to adjust as some schools return to virtual environments or to provide alternatives for students at home due to isolation, illness or other circumstances.
An easy way to provide choice and flexibility is to invite students to choose their own law and ethics session from this free online repository coordinated by Virginia High School League and Virginia Association of Journalism Teachers and Advisers. Students can produce a slide, mini-lesson or other short debrief to share what they learned.
Seniors can work on Journalist of the Year entries and develop their law and ethics section with some extra help from this Portfolio Polish resource.
Prospective editors can build a plan for how they’ll teach important scholastic press rights issues to next year’s staff. Have you added a related question to your editor interview process?
Students of any experience level can also view and analyze these award-winning First Amendment PSAs and create their own.
All of these options work well for in-person scenarios, too, of course!
- Gear up for Scholastic Journalism Week. What gets scheduled gets done, so it’s time to help students plan for #SJW2022 (Feb. 21-25, 2022) and the #AmplifyingVoices theme.
Student Press Freedom Day is a signature aspect of the week-long celebration. The Student Press Law Center has developed a variety of activities and suggestions for how students can take part in advocacy, outreach and more for a day of action Feb. 24.
Look for more ideas — and share what you’re doing — on social media.
If you’re beginning a semester with new or transfer students, don’t forget to match them with a mentor from your staff to provide extra training on students’ rights and responsibilities as journalists.
As we embrace this fresh start, let’s show students how important these topics are by doing what we can to incorporate law and ethics activities on a regular basis in 2022.
* Don’t beat yourself up about what you didn’t get to last semester. Just start fresh!
Read MoreFive steps for a great start to the school year
The typical to-do list of journalism teachers during the back to school season often includes setting up the newsroom, prepping lessons, attending professional development days and coordinating with editors and staffers. Whether that list lives in a mobile app, Google Doc or pretty new notebook, it’s usually a long one.
But adding these five things to the teacher to-do list will make for a great experience all year long. A little extra planning and outreach in August builds a foundation for students and colleagues that truly sets the tone for student press freedom, positive working relationships and increased awareness on campus.
Consider these for a great start:
- Get on the school calendar now for Constitution Day. Administrators often develop a list of upcoming events to distribute at staff in-service, for the school website, for parent communications and for posting on social media. Make sure Sept. 17 is listed, and begin the conversation with key partners on your campus about what activities you’ll plan and implement. Check out JEA’s set of Constitution Day lessons and activities here.
- Meet with any new teachers and staff members on your campus. Ideally, you can carve out a few minutes to introduce yourself and share about the student media program you advise. Who knows what journalism was like that their previous schools? Drop off copies of the students’ publication so your new colleagues can see what a great job students do. With just a brief conversation you can create the beginning of a positive relationship and help them understand that your students make the content decisions and take their roles as reporters seriously with a focus on truth, accuracy and integrity. If possible, invite them to stop by your room to see the media staff in full swing.
If possible, guide your editors as they prepare a brief introduction to new staff members, too. It’s great for new teachers to see students taking the lead, especially so they learn to contact students with story ideas or questions rather than coming to you. - Incorporate the First Amendment in your welcome back activities. Make these part of any icebreakers, bootcamp sessions, editors’ planning meetings and other gatherings you have lined up for the next month. Incoming editors will follow your example; if you use law and ethics discussions as part of your first meet-up or work session together, they’ll do the same when training their new staff members.
Even simple warm-ups like singing, rapping or reciting the First Amendment or using related T-shirts (like this one or this one) as special prizes will set the tone for a new school year. One simple activity in teams is to distribute envelopes containing the 45 words of the First Amendment on little slips of paper and having a race for each team to put the words in order correctly.
4. Add the First Amendment Press Freedom Award application to your editors’ to-do list. They’re probably in the process of determining the publication/distribution dates and deadline nights for the semester, so the timing is perfect for them to add the Dec. 15 application deadline. As we all know, what gets scheduled gets done. And having the award on their radar may lead to positive, necessary conversations from editors and staffers to educate their classmates, teachers and administrators throughout the fall.
5. Commit to teaching law and ethics. Plan lessons both for the start of the school year and to incorporate periodically all year long. Don’t rush into production with all attention on deadlines only to have students miss the significance of what they’re doing. Don’t apply a “one and done” unit in the first month and consider students’ learning complete. As you map out a scope and sequence, plan to revisit and layer important topics related to student press freedom and their rights and responsibilities.
The Law and Ethics module in the JEA Curriculum Initiative is a great place to start. You also can print the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics for classroom use, or contact them to request a class set of bookmarks. The Student Press Law Center has great resources for educators, too. The key is to plan now and make it a recurring topic for discussion, reading, analysis, debate and/or practice in your journalism curriculum.
With a strong foundation and continuous practice, students make better, more informed decisions.
An adviser’s First Amendment passion is contagious, and the time invested now to accomplish these five tasks will pave the way for students and colleagues to follow your lead.
Brett Kavanaugh’s 1983 yearbook provides teachable moments
Yearbooks are forever.
We wear this statement on matching T-shirts, mail it home on marketing postcards and proudly display it on homemade posters created by dedicated publications staffs nationwide.
But less than one week before National Yearbook Week 2018, the phrase takes on new significance during the hearings surrounding Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Earlier this week, Kavanaugh’s 1983 Georgetown Prep yearbook page made the news for its references to drinking and partying along with coded mentions of a female classmate that appear to be demeaning inside jokes.
Seeing a yearbook page in the news is always a teachable moment, of course. Journalism teachers can show students — and other stakeholders — the value of yearbooks as historical record, as memory keepers and, depending on one’s perspective, possibly as a sort of character reference. The way people hold on to yearbooks, as Heather Schwedel describes in this Slate article, draws attention to a student publication 35 years later as a form of historical evidence.
What complicates the larger discourse is the social media noise, which quickly shifted to placing blame on the yearbook adviser and others responsible for producing the publication. A tweet by Soledad O’Brien questioned the adviser, and the comments that followed illustrate the wide range of uninformed public opinions about what should and shouldn’t find its way into a yearbook — and who plays a hand in that decision.
What can yearbook staff members learn from the 1983 Cupola?
Recent H.L. Hall National Yearbook Adviser of the Year winners share their perspectives to help add context and offer guidance for students and teachers discussing this in their journalism classes.
What is the role of the adviser?
“Advisers are responsible for helping guide staff members in understanding their responsibilities and through challenges they face. They are not there to censor or to dictate content. They are there to provide support, advice and direction. Advisers are not there to serve as editors of student publications. They are there to help students establish the standards and guide them.”
— Brenda Field, MJE; Glenbrook South High School (Glenbrook, Ill.)
“First and foremost, the role of the yearbook adviser is to teach responsible journalism. If we’re doing our jobs, then students will be equipped to make responsible decisions regarding content. And this is what happens every single day in yearbook journalism classrooms across the country. Yes, I read every word that went into the books I advised, as that was the expectation in my school and community. But it was the editors and staff who ultimately determined content.”
— Cindy Todd; retired from Westlake High School (Austin, Texas)
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Maybe #Firstonthefirst initiative can help move the needle
Maybe it was last night’s reflection on Anthony Kennedy’s final day serving as a Supreme Court justice.
Or maybe it was because I’m still recovering from the latest State of the First Amendment survey.
In case you missed it, more than one-third of the survey respondents (40 percent) could not name a single freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment. Only one out of the 1,009 people surveyed could correctly name all five freedoms.
That blows my mind, and I often think about what I can or should be doing differently to help move the needle outside the walls of my classroom.
So today I began what I’m calling #Firstonthefirst.
I made a commitment to talk to five strangers today and share with them about the First Amendment. I’m going to do it on the first of every month, and I hope you’ll join me.
It’s easy enough to visit with folks in line at Starbucks or the grocery checkout, or colleagues at school, or parents on the bleachers at your kiddo’s sporting event. A few minutes of conversation can make a huge difference. I want the people in my community to know the five freedoms and to have a better understanding of why the First Amendment matters.
To make a visual connection, I wore one of my First Amendment T-shirts, and I’ll do that for each #Firstonthefirst. There’s something about seeing those 45 words (or in the case of this shirt, my favorite of those 45) that makes it more memorable, and I hope to leverage the power of social media to spread this movement and get my students — and all of you — having these First Amendment conversations as well.
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