Why I Love Teaching Journalism
I am writing this from school. It’s 1st period and I am “teaching” my class of 29 students, grades 9-12. It has been a long, strange year, and we are finally glimpsing the flickering light at the end of the tunnel. (It has to be said that the “tunnel” of this year has been very long, very dark, very scary, has taken about a jillion unexpected turns, and at times, felt like it might be leading us all to the center of the earth or some other dismal place of no return.) As a final project for this class, my students and I are building professional blogs. Yes, I’m doing the assignment too. And, this is why I love teaching journalism: because teaching journalism, allows me to DO journalism.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t just teach journalism so I can sit at my desk writing my own stories while I ignore my students. There are actually lots of reasons I love teaching journalism, not least of which is that I believe journalism is vitally important to the preservation of our democracy—something the events of the past year have taught us is possibly more fragile than we realized.
Journalists are our watchdogs, alerting us to abuses of power; investigating, sleuthing, and reporting details that are often concealed or manipulated. Journalism tells true stories—the stories about our lives, as they happen and helps us make sense of the information, issues, and ideas confronting us each day. Journalists serve—they provide a voice for the voiceless. I believe that good journalism truly does have potential to make positive change by “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.”
But for me, what makes teaching journalism especially rewarding, is being able to DO journalism with my students.
In today’s digital age, there are so many ways to tell and share stories that weren’t possible when I was in school. Just about every citizen today has the tools they need, at their fingertips (literally), to write, publish, and broadcast stories—in real time. This is both exciting and terrifying. In my classroom, we talk a lot about the challenges of managing the deluge of information we are all exposed to minute by minute. We also talk a lot about what information is valuable, helpful, relevant, and needed. My students are learning that they have a responsibility both as a writer and as a reader. There is power at both ends of this relationship—as much as we love it, we also respect it.
One of the ways we exercise our power and respect for the role is by creating blogs. Blogging is self publishing. It is using our skills as readers, writers and thinkers to inform, inspire, and maybe influence change. By self-publishing, we are using our own storytelling skills to add to the swirling conversations that are relevant to our audiences. We are using our journalism savvy to build connection and community.
I blog with my students because I think the ideas we have and the words we put together to share those ideas, matter. A lot. I have ideas. I want to share them. My students have ideas. I want to hear them. I want them to use their journalism skills to teach me things and to serve the communities they belong to.
Journalism is making true-life stories with purpose and clarity. It takes practice to be good at it, but the rewards are great: stories have the power to change our lives.
I love teaching journalism because it gives me a place to practice what I preach.