Start your new year with a call to action: Hazelwood anniversary looms
by Megan Fromm
Yes, students, there is a Grinch. And its name is Hazelwood.
On January 13, 2013 student journalists and advisers across the country will (begrudgingly) commemorate 25 years of Hazelwood censorship.
In the hopes of inspiring change, dialogue and ultimately greater scholastic press freedom for all students, SPRC is finalizing its 25th Anniversary Hazelwood Teacher’s Kit.
This kit will include:
- promotional materials for commemorating the event
- lesson plans to better understand student press rights and combat Hazelwood censorship
- a news release to engage your local journalists
- a letter to administrators
- and more!
Most importantly, the SPRC has created specific calls to action for students and advisers. We will also be live-tweeting resources and ideas throughout the month of January.
In partnership with the Student Press Law Center’s “Cure Hazelwood” campaign (www.curehazelwood.org), we encourage all scholastic journalists and advisers to put the 25th anniversary of the Hazelwood decision on your agenda.
Just imagine what could happen if scholastic journalists from schools across the nation made a collective, informed, impassioned plea for freedom. What a difference we could make!
So, this holiday season, we hope you will kick back, enjoy the festivities, and keep tabs on the SPRC blog for our upcoming teacher kit. Let’s make 2013 the year Hazelwood takes a hike!
Read MoreA Praxis about journalism?
What do YOU know?
by Candace Bowen
Chemistry teachers take a test showing they know electronic configurations based on the periodic table. History teachers demonstrate what they know about the early river valley civilizations. And the list goes on.
But how often and where do journalism teachers have to prove their knowledge?
Not too often, if the Praxis content area tests are any measure. There has been no such test for future journalism teachers until recently, though the list of tests for those teaching other sorts of courses is long.
First, full disclosure: I know nothing about electronic configurations and even less about early river valley civilizations. I don’t even know too much about the Praxis content area tests.
But the latter isn’t my fault. As soon as I heard about a month ago that such a test exists, my goal was to find out about it.
Read More
Fighting FERPA with facts
by Mark Goodman
As noted in the JEA SPRC blog in September, the Student Press Law Center is taking on schools that misuse FERPA in a new and powerful way. Scholastic journalists can get in on the action.
FERPA stands for the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. It’s the federal law enacted in 1974 to regulate the release by educational institutions of student “education records.” FERPA sought to put an end to schools releasing student grades and other academic records without the student’s permission (or the permission of parents if the student is a minor). It also sought to ensure that students (and parents) had a right to see their own records maintained by the school. The penalty for non-compliance with FERPA is the risk of loss of federal funding.
But as many student journalists and advisers know, FERPA has become a monster, something much bigger than what its legislative sponsors ever intended. Over the years, schools have learned they can use the law as justification for refusing to provide all sorts of information they might rather not reach the media or the public.
From crime reports about college athletes to the signers of petitions submitted to a public school board, schools across the nation have used FERPA as the perfect excuse for denying information to the public.
The SPLC and advocates for open government are now saying, “no more.” Their FERPA Fact website chronicles the growing number of misuses of FERPA made by schools and exposes those that are inaccurate interpretations of the law. The site is a great source of story ideas for scholastic journalists.
It also is a good reminder to high school reporters and editors not to presume every time FERPA gets thrown in their face, the justification is a valid one.
If FERPA has been used as a justification for denying your staff records maintained by your school, submit your story for a FERPA Fact “fact checking.” You might get the arguments you need to counter your school’s denial.
Read More
How to seek truth from power
By Marina Hendricks
At the recent JEA/NSPA Fall National Convention in San Antonio, members of the Scholastic Press Rights Commission conducted open forums for students and advisers to discuss issues they are having with prior review and restraint.
One discussion yielded a gratifying display of peer mentoring, with students who freely practice journalism in their schools counseling others on how to build sounder journalistic relationships with their administrators. Reflecting on it later, I was reminded of how important it is for student journalists to develop the habit of questioning authority – not as rebels, but as reporters.
“When journalists don’t fully understand how power shapes language to serve its own ends, they inevitably become pawns to those who do. Power then takes the wheel of society, and drives it where it will,” writes Doug McGill, a veteran reporter and author of The McGill Report media blog.
The following lesson plan is designed to help student journalists become more comfortable with interviewing and holding sources accountable – particularly the sources who are considered “authority figures.”
Goals for Understanding:
Essential question:
How can we conduct effective interviews, especially with authority figures?
Critical engagement questions:
• How can we go beyond face value with our sources?
• How can we respectfully push for the information we need?
• When we don’t understand something a source says, how can we ask for explanations or elaborations?
Overviews and Timeline:
Activity 1 (one 50-minute class)
Students will read “A Syllabus for a Moral Journalism.” In small groups, they will review stories from the school publication (chosen in advance by the instructor and the editor) to identify cases where sources could have been more thoroughly interviewed. Groups will consider what information is missing, what information is not adequately explained, what terms are not defined, what points of view are not included, and so forth. For homework, students will read “Handling Tough Interviewees” and “Avoiding the Suits.”
Activity 2 (one 50-minute class)
Groups will present the results of their content reviews. Led by the editor, students will discuss how they would report the stories in light of the three readings in Activity 1. The editor will note key strategies on a board or flip chart, then will use those to create an interview tip sheet.
Activity 3 (one 50-minute class, plus advance preparation time)
The instructor will invite an “authority figure” from the school community to participate in an interview with the class. The editor will moderate the interview, and will work with students in advance to help them develop questions. The instructor may want to record the interview for future reference.
Assessment (one 50-minute class)
Led by the editor, students will discuss the interview with the authority figure. They will review the tip sheet from Activity 2 and update it based on their experience. Grading will be based on participation in group and class discussions, and demonstrated ability to analyze situations in a mature, logical fashion.
FAPFA application deadline is Dec. 1
by John Bowen
The deadline is fast approaching for this year’s First Amendment Press Freedom Award (FAPFA).
‘Whad’ya know?’
New teachers should answer, ‘Law & ethics!’
by Candace Bowen
As Wisconsin Public Radio’s Michael Feldman asks each week, “Whad’ya know?” Sadly, even some secondary school journalism teachers with proper credentials can answer, like Feldman’s audience, “Not much!”
At least that appears to be true when it comes to law and ethics.
And some teachers don’t know much because no one required them to learn much to get their jobs.
Case #1: My own state — Ohio — has Integrated Language Arts licensure, a common sort of “mile wide, half inch deep” curriculum that means pre-service teachers study something about English, speech, theater and journalism, but not necessarily much about any one of those.
In addition, the state Department of Education approves each college’s curriculum, but anecdotal evidence indicates some higher education programs don’t stick to what they submitted for approval more than 10 years ago. Thus students graduate with little or no journalism, and what they do have is often only beginning newswriting.
Read More