Teaching Journalism

 

 

Ned Flanders, the principal at GJ High School allowed me to take the Journalism Class when the original teacher dropped out or wanted a change.  I don’t recall the details of that, only that suddenly there was an opening and it was offered to me.

My suspicion is that Mr. Flanders felt since he was stuck with me on his staff, that I would cause fewer problems with an elective than if I were in an English classroom.  As I have said my classroom management skills were very weak.

When I say that my classroom management skills were weak, what I am actually saying is that my classroom management skills were not like most teachers.  Most teachers want absolute control.  Most teachers want to enforce silence, to control movement, and get instant compliance to their orders.  Any teacher that is not like that is called weak, they let the kids run wild.  

I agree that given the ambiance of most schools I deserved the label of a teacher with weak classroom management skills, but it is possible that I was not as horrible at teaching as some thought.  If education is there to allow a student to learn how to learn, and to learn in cooperation with other learners, then such a classroom will be louder.  Think about when you, as an adult, have worked on a project that required a group of other adults to brainstorm, cooperate, and to problem solve together.  Do you stay on task all the time when working with your group?  If you do, you are in a group unlike any adult group I’ve ever seen.  It is my experience that the talking off task is part of relationship building, and working with people with whom you have a relationship makes it easier to problem solve with the goal of accomplishing something in the end.

When I am stuck I often find that it is when I stop struggling, take a break, do something else, that a possible solution pops into my head.  I’m just saying it is possible that sometimes I was doing good work, but in a way that did not fit the expectations of the people around me.

Now as soon as I took the journalism class I realized that I never should have been given the school newspaper and the journalism classes, because I never took a journalism class. My only experience with journalism is when I was the advertising manager of the Wewoka Daily Times.  This was before the common use of the computer by the masses.  I didn’t really know about Journalism style other than you put your important information first and as your story goes your lessor information is added.  This way, to make a story fit in the space available you can cut paragraphs from the bottom.

The journalism classroom was small and filled with Mac Computers loaded with the Page Maker software.  I had never used a Mac, and I had no clue how to use the Page Maker program.  I remember that school was going to have a long weekend.  Labor Day is the first Monday in September which meant that I had Saturday through Monday, three days, to learn how to use Page Maker.

I got my only friend at the school, Mario Crews to give me a key to the school so I could work on the Mac/Page Maker over this long weekend.  I went to Barnes and Noble to buy a Page Maker For Dummies book.  I worked from afternoon to after 11 pm night after night and by Tuesday I knew how to use Page Maker.  

Maybe I wasn’t as proficient as real gifted computer users, but I knew it well enough to lay up pages and prepare them for a printer.  I had another asset:  my students.  Kids are often better at using a computer than their old guy teacher, and I knew if I could teach them the basics that they could go from there to improve our skills.  

The previous journalism teacher had printed a paper that was printed on slick paper, and she could send the lay up digitally to a printer she’d worked with back when she was at a previous high school.  The cost of printing the school paper was in the area of $600.  My goal was to have the paper published monthly, and the journalism students worked hard so that we could get the paper out.  We charged a dime for the paper.

Our first paper was well received by most people.  It was a safe effort.  I did get some negative feedback because we had a couple of typos that were missed.  These typo matters always, always, always hit me right in the heart.  I was a lifelong poor speller.  I would think, anyone who spelled as poorly as I did would have no business being an editor, and to be the editor of students trying to learn the journalism skill, well, obviously I was a poor choice as teacher.  Nevertheless, I was the teacher.  I had the duty.  I needed to endure the criticism.  I had to do my best for the students.  I know this will sound like a big ole frickin’ lie, but I loved my students.\

THE STUDENTS

I think I only had a couple of students that signed up for journalism that I did not know.  Most of my students in journalism were kids I’d had in drama, and kids that had been in my plays.  You can’t rehearse and put on a play without getting to know your actors and crew as humans with a life outside of school.  I think the cruelty I witnessed by some teachers can be blamed on them not seeing students as whole sentient human beings.

I’m going to change some names because I want to pretend no one will know who I’m talking about.  I’ll start with a student I’ll call Mike Carter.  

Mike Carter is one of the students that I grew extremely close to, and he was a kid I have continued to be in touch with, now that he is a grown man.  My first encounter with Mike could easily have been my last.  Mike came to my introduction to drama class, and he had changed his name.  Mike’s old name was on the student roll so when I was calling roll and called his old name, [it was something like Leslie, or Barney, or something easy to not like]  Mike was immediately mad at me.  Too bad.  I didn’t embarrass him on purpose.  If that had been the only problem that first day of class we could have survived it, but then I had an activity that required the students to get in front of the class and tell something about themselves.

Later I learned that Mike had this horrible case of stage fright.  Mike was so terrified of getting up in front of the class that he had a panic attack.  I was called to the back of the classroom [I think this was when we were having class on the stage] and there was Mike on the floor, curled into a fetal position and he was unresponsive to my voice.  I buzzed the office saying I needed an administrator at the theatre asap.

As soon as Mike heard that I’d called for someone to come down from the office he snapped out of it.  Mike had this look of intense anger on his face.  

He said something like, “Why did you do that.  You have ruined my life.  I’ll be the laughing stock of the school.”  I’m sure his words were sharper, clearer and firmer than what I can reconstruct.  When Mr. Cruz got to the theatre Mike was fine.  He was not on the floor.  He did not look nervous.

Mr. Cruz was sure Mike must be a drug user and this curling up on the floor was from a drug overdose.  The problem with this knee jerk response is that Mike was unimpaired.  Mike was sober.  Rage had sobered him up.

I was so afraid that I had hurt this young man, embarrassed him, and that he and I were never going to get along.  I was wrong.  Mike turned out to be a very intelligent guy.  Mike also turned out be a skilled actor, and I ended up casting him in every production he tried out for, often he was the lead.  

When I took the school newspaper on, Mike signed up for journalism.  Abe Giltmore was another student that had been cast in God’s Favorite, he was in the drama club, and he followed me into the journalism class.  Abe was sort of disabled.  Abe had Low Vision.  He was not totally blind, but he may have been, and probably was legally blind.  I am sure Abe would never be allowed to drive.  Abe wanted to be a writer.  I grew extremely close to Abe.  I know I shouldn’t have done it, but I would often take kids home after rehearsals.  My practice was always to drop the girls off first.  The last thing a teacher wants is to be accused of inappropriate behavior with a girl student and if I still had male students in the car when I dropped off the last girl I usually felt safe-er.  Abe was often the last kid I dropped off and he and I talked a lot.  Abe’s parents were somewhat prosperous, at least compared to me.  They lived in a nice house.  Abe had a little brother and a stepmother.  

There were others that I was extremely fond of:  Judy George, Jason Rippito, Max Anderson, Candye Capers and two music loving best friends:  Liz Goldstine and Patsy Peterson.

THE PAPERS

The first issue did not sell.  I was concerned.  I had a ton of unsold papers.  What happened is that one or two kids would buy a paper, and after they scanned it, they let other students read the paper for free.

The key to selling the paper was when a student had their picture or name included in an issue.  But I realized out of over 2000 students at GJ High School, I was not going to get 2000 names in every issue.

It occurred to me that in the real newspaper business that subscription fees were never enough to support to cost of producing a newspaper.  Paying for the cost, and earning the profit, comes from money generated by advertising.  I decided to do two things:  

1. I would seek a cheaper way to publish the paper.  Paying $600 per issue seemed too high to me.
2. I decided to get my students to sell ads and give the paper to the student body.

I did find a place to get the paper published.  In Bartow there was a small town newspaper that was willing to print our paper at a much cheaper price.  One of the reasons it was cheaper is that it was not printed on slick paper like a school board newsletter, it was going to be printed on real news print.  The school newspaper was going to look like a real newspaper.  I thought this was not only good because it was cheaper, but it was good because it was in the form of an actual newspaper.  

I being the poor visionary that I am, had no idea that the days of the newspaper were numbered.  Again, it really doesn’t matter, because the specifics that one teaches are not all that important.  Life is change.  The gift of education is when the learner learns how to learn.

Still, because I had no clue about the future, I was thrilled to find a cheaper way to print the paper.

The second step was to get the students to sell enough ads to pay for the paper, enabling me to give the paper away.  Most of my students could drive, and most of them had cars.  Journalism was the last period of the school day.  We would brainstorm possible businesses that might buy ads.  I had the students think what family and family friends might buy ads in our paper.  After we had exhausted the easy sell folk, we had to reach out to businesses that support the schools, or have a business within the GH High School.  I had the kids go out and interview people, and two or three days a week they were in the class writing.  The other days they would check in, get passes to leave and they would go out and sell ads.

Now I knew that young people, given freedom to be away from the peering eyes of teachers and parents, will not always do the things adults would want them to do.  Sometimes kids, off the leash, might smoke cigarettes, or marijuana, and they might, from time to time drink alcohol, meet up with sexually pliable young ladies, et cetera, et cetera.  Now did my wonderful young journalists sluff off the selling of ads to do naughty stuff?  I have no idea.  I suspect that such things might have happened from time to time.

The thing is, even if the kids were less than diligent 100% of the time, we still sold enough ads to publish the paper, we never got behind on the cost, and all went well, some of the time.  

Two Negative Stories About Journalism

The Ad Story

Like the times I was called in about the theatre, I got a PA call to report to Nad Flander’s office.  I went with that same feeling all children get being called to the principal’s office.  What did I do wrong this time.
 

The wrong this time was unexpected.

“I got a call,” Mr. Flanders said, from a parent of one of your journalism students.”

“O. K.”

“Did you accept an ad from the Women’s Center for Health?”

I had to think a moment.  Then I remembered the ad had come in at the end of last week.  It was an ad one of the students brought in, because his mother was an administrator of the Women’s Center for Health and she wanted to help support the newspaper.  I shared what I knew with Mr. Flanders.

“Are you knowingly accepting an ad from an abortion clinic?” he asked.

“Uh, er, ulm,” I said because I am fast on my feet, “well, I guess I didn’t know the Women’s Center for Health was an abortion clinic.”

“Well, they are,” Mr. Flanders said, “and this is just the sort of thing I would expect from someone like you.”

The conversation was not going well.

“What does that mean, ‘someone like me.’ ” I asked.

“You are liberal,” he said.  “You tolerate what almost no other teacher would tolerate.”

“Are you sure this is an abortion clinic?” I asked trying to refocus the conversation.  “It sounds like it would be a place where people would go for women health things.  You know like screenings for breast cancer, uterine cancer, and maybe they might give out birth control.”

“Maybe you are right, Tex,” Flanders said, “but that is enough knowledge to call your decision into question. I can’t believe you would place the school in this sort of position where we are advocating birth control and abortion to our student body.”

“The ad doesn’t say anything about anything,”  I explained. “The ad is the name of the place, the address, and a phone number.  Other than Women’s Health Center, it doesn’t say what goes on there.  I was thinking it was just a clinic.”

“You need to return that money to the student’s mother, and you are not to take ads of a controversial nature anymore.”

I did as directed.  What pissed me off most about this whole thing is that at the end of the school year, when the yearbooks were passed out, there was that same exact ad in the yearbook, supporting the cost of printing the yearbook.

Why wasn’t the yearbook teacher called in, bent over, and reamed out like I’d been?

I liked my students, but I was not feeling so warm and fuzzy towards the administration.

    42 Students Left on the Side of the Road

My second story about teaching journalism had to do with one of our front page stories.  

The incident actually happened to Mike Carter, one of my journalism students.  What happened is that while taking students home from school, the students on the bus got unruly.  I have forgotten the details, but it seems like something happened like one or two or maybe ten kids had water guns or maybe there was some sort of pushing and shoving going on, but whatever it was that happened, the bus driver got pissed off, and after yelling at the students and when they would not quiet down and stop whatever it was they were doing, the bus driver stopped the bus, ordered all the students off the bus and then the driver drove off and left 42 students on the side of the road.  

Lakeland is not a small town, but it is also not a megalopolis.  The spot where the 42 students were dumped off was like a rural road.  There was no sidewalk.  The students had to walk home walking a long a two lane blacktopped road with just a small shoulder.  This was, in my view dangerous.  This was also a real story.

I had one of the students call the district administrator in charge of transportation.  We got a no comment, but we went to the Assistant Superintendent over our area of the district and the next time we spoke with the transportation administrator he said personal matters were confidential, but he was willing to say that the matter was under review and appropriate steps would be taken.

We printed the story with a couple of sidebars.  We had interviews with some of  students who’d been put off the bus, a parent, and the comments from the transportation dude.

What followed was another PA call for Mr. Norman to report to Mr. Flander’s office.

To show how stupid I am, I had no clue this story was going to get me into hot water.  

Mr. Flanders sat me down.  He sat in the chair next to me, instead of behind his desk, or on the corner of his desk.  

“Why?” he asked me, “why would you print a story like this?”  His hand patted the Eagle Eye Newspaper resting in his lap, the 42 Students story facing up.

“Why wouldn’t I publish the story?” I asked back, and I was genuinely nonplused

“It’s something that happened.”

“A lot of things happen,” Mr. Flanders said.  “It is your responsibility, as the teacher to help the journalism students make the right choices about what is covered.”

“I did that.  I encouraged the students to write about this incident.  One of the journalism students was on the bus.”

“A story like this brings shame and embarrassment to the school district,” Mr. Flanders said.

“And by focusing on the incident, and because of the shame and embarrassment, what happened is less likely to happen again.”  I actually believed that.  I stupidly thought that bringing attention to something bad would help to keep that particular bad from being repeated.

“Why does everything have to be negative with you,” Mr. Flanders said, and I could figure out, being a student of human behavior, that my principal was pissed off at me.  “Why couldn’t you do a story like, 10,000 STUDENTS TRANSPORTED DAILY -- NO ACCIDENTS.”

i didn’t mean to, but I had my ARE YOU FUCKIN’ KIDDING ME look on my face.

“What you are asking me to do to write only positive stuff, and that is not news,” I said.

“It is news,” he countered.  “Thousands of students are transported to and from school every day and there are almost never any accidents.  How is that not newsworthy?”

I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation.

“Good news is only news if it is unusual.  Given your view, I could write a story about how many people swallow successfully every day.  That is just not news because it is so common that it is not unusual enough to be of interest to readers.  Unusual stuff is newsworthy stuff.”

“But you are not the Lakeland Ledger, or the New York Times, you’re the journalism teacher of a school newspaper, paid for by the school.”

“Are you saying a school newspaper should not print newsworthy stories about things that happened to our own student body?”

“Have you ever heard DON’T BITE THE HAND THAT FEEDS YOU?” Mr. Flanders said.   “You can print about up and coming events, the results of football games, and take pictures at the prom, but a school newspaper is not there to air the school districts dirty laundry for all to read.”

“I’m supposed to be teaching the students journalism.  Real journalism is not sterile, antiseptic stories approved by those in authority.  Don’t you want me to teach the students how to be real journalist?  Or am I supposed to teach them how to be public relations writers, or propagandists?”

I got through the year, but I was not interested in being a journalism teacher another year.  I figure that was a mutual decision for me and Flanders.