The inability of many of today’s students to evaluate information online for truthfulness has become a crisis in American education. Even though most students now use the Internet as their primary tool to learn what’s happening in the world, the education system has been slow to acknowledge the problem and begin a serious search for solutions. I hope you’re ready to do your part, and that you’ll find what I’ve shared here useful in shaping a better educator response to a global trend...
There has been an influx of reading lists for white Americans to more deeply understand the long history and enduring egregious examples of systemic racism in our country in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. This is a rational and important reaction: we know that reading increases knowledge, understanding, and empathy. I am a white educator in a predominately white county and school. Too often, segregated white spaces are insulated from needing to do the urgent work of dismantling...
My name is Jane Bannester and I’m a teacher at Ritenour High School in St. Louis, Missouri. On Aug. 9, 2014, Michael Brown Jr., an 18-year-old black man, was fatally shot by 28-year-old white police officer Darren Wilson in the city of Ferguson, a suburb of St. Louis. It happened on a Saturday. Our school began its first day of a new school year that Monday. Ritenour High School was in the circle of protests that ran several weeks. It is only 13 miles from Ferguson, separated by an airport. At...
From yearbooks to newspapers, websites to infographics, and everything in between, headlines are critical to draw in readers. Yet, headlines are often taken for granted and not talked about nearly enough in the Journalism classroom. A great place to start is reading this article and sharing it with your students. Headlines do hold historic importance that resonates today. Headlines date back to when increased competition between newspapers led to the use of bolder and stronger headlines. The name of the game was grabbing someone’s attention so they would purchase YOUR newspaper and not the competition’s! Jump forward to the day of online news outlets. Headlines are just as important...
Sophie Goalson (pen name Sophie Lucido Johnson) is a writer and illustrator. Her work has been published in “The New York Times,” “The New Yorker,” and “The Guardian,” as well as other publications. She also teaches journalism, podcasting, and creative writing at Chicago’s sole art conservatory public high school. Part of her duties include overseeing the web-based student newspaper and the student-directed podcast for the Chicago High School for the Arts. Sophie noticed her journalism students needed more time to read, process, and analyze longer news articles, so she created a game plan to give them the opportunity to do so. She read a variety of long-form articles and...
There are instances where a tried and true reporting process can seem stagnant and worn out. One may even feel something is too old school to be relevant in a digital age. However, this is not the case with the inverted pyramid style of news writing. The inverted pyramid method of news writing dates back to the invention of the telegraph. When news was sent out over wire, the most important information was placed in the first lines of type. For more information, check out Poynter’s article Birth of the Inverted Pyramid: A Child of Technology, Commerce and History. The telegraph is now tweets, online newspapers, and status updates. With shorter attention spans and more digital content...
