Mr. B-G's Blog

Tomorrow my Journalism students and I will venture to a nearby city for a tour of one of the area's daily newspapers. This will be my fourth year taking the students to the paper, and I have no doubt that it will be - as it has been in the past - one of the year's highlights.

The editor-in-chief has graciously agreed to give some of his time to the students and lead them through an editorial exercise where they will be responsible for selecting the stories that would have run on both the main and local front pages. Students will split into teams of four, be given a list of about 20 articles the paper was planning to run, and then decide what gets prominent placement and what doesn't.

After the students reveal their choices, the EIC will display that day's paper and explain why they ran what they did. It's a fast-paced, authentic activity that simulates the decisions editors must make as they work to create each issue.

This will be followed by a tour of the newsroom and the paper's printing press. Finally, the students and I will adjourn for lunch before heading back to school. Not a bad way to spend a Thursday.

In celebration of Scholastic Journalism Week later this month, my journalism students and I will be wearing black armbands in recognition of the 40th anniversary of the Tinker court decision, which affirmed students' rights to free speech within public school settings.

Other students, teachers, and even members of our school's administration - including the principal - will be wearing armbands in recognition of the Tinker children's unwillingness to allow school officials to censor them.

Because of the Tinker ruling, students in American schools are free to express their views, so long as that expression does not disrupt the educational process of the school. By ruling in favor of the Tinker children, the U.S. Supreme Court found that neither students or teachers "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."

The Tinker children's "crime" was the wearing of black armbands to school in protest of the Vietnam war. School officials disapproved of the message, and suspended the students indefinitely until they agreed to not wear the armbands. More than two weeks passed until the students returned to school after their scheduled period of protest ended.

Once news of the school's disciplinary action got out, the Iowa Civil Liberties Union agreed to represent the Tinker family in court. The plaintiffs argued that the school's actions violated the Tinker children's rights to free speech. The nation's highest court eventually agreed, and as such, future generations of schoolchildren have a legal precedent that supports their right to free speech.

Because I teach in Massachusetts, my students have additional free speech rights thanks to the state supreme court case of Pyle vs. South Hadley. That case found that students may engage in vulgar, non school-sponsored speech, so long as it does not disrupt the educational process of the school. The case stemmed from two brothers' attempts to wear Coed Naked t-shirts during gym class. Coed Naked t-shirts - known for sexual innuendo - were popular in the early-to mid-1990's. I remember because I owned a few of them while in high school. As members of the cross country team, a number of us had the shirt "Coed Naked Cross Country: Do It To The Rhythm."

Other popular shirts were "Coed Naked Soccer: Use Your Head to Score," "Coed Naked Football: Bring Out The Chains," and "Coed Naked Hockey: Two Minutes In The Box Isn't Enough."

My classmates and I never experienced any flack from teachers or administrators over the shirts. However, a South Hadley High School gym teacher didn't appreciate their messages, and tried to ban students from wearing them. Eventually the Massachusetts State Supreme Court ruled that the "vulgar" standard was capricious and subjective, and that the true measure of if something could be worn by a student was if it caused a substantial and material disruption to the educational process.

My students and I are extremely fortunate to conduct our business within a Massachusetts school led by an administrative team that acknowledges and understands the value of a free independent press, and the importance of students being free to express themselves. John and Mary Beth Tinker, Mr. B-G's English Blog salutes you!

A sampling of musings from the mind of a suburban high school English teacher:

School administrators are using adjectives like "bloody," "gloomy," and "bleak" to describe the current financial state of affairs for the rest of this year and next. I am hopeful that Barack Obama will authorize federal legislation to help cities and towns deal with declines in state aid revenue. I find it a bit disconcerting that we can easily lend billions of taxpayer dollars to automakers and finance companies, yet are forced to pause and deliberate when it comes to ensuring all our country's students receive a solid education. Anyone who has ever worked inside a school can tell you, every dollar does make a difference.

Are there any teachers out there with writing centers at their schools? When I was a M.Ed. graduate student at Plymouth State University, I worked in the college's writing center. It was one of the most enjoyable jobs I've ever had. In order to get the hang of it, I underwent training in the non-directive approach to writing consultation. One of the most valuable things I learned was "silent and wait time." For the non-directive approach to be effective, the writing consultant must be patient and give the student time to ruminate on an idea or improvement. This was quite different than my days as a newspaper reporter, when editors would explain everything I did wrong and then fix it for me. I hope to eventually create a student-staffed writing center at my high school, as I've seen how they can be effective. I believe that if implemented with care, they can work at the secondary level. Please contact me if you have experience with high school writing centers.

Launching a high school newspaper advertising initiative in the middle of the year is difficult. For years my high school's newspaper was published in-house on an archaic printing press that only one teacher knew how to use. When he retired last year, so did the press and all that it produced. Left without a means to publish our newspaper, I was relegated to performing evening prayer rituals to Joseph Pulitzer in hopes of securing funding. My calls were eventually answered by my principal, who offered to give us enough money to publish five papers this year. My goal for next year (or perhaps even later this year) is to create an advertising department with a business manager responsible for generating enough ad sales to allow each issue to pay for itself.

We finally got around to hosting our Poetry Out Loud Recitation Contest. The original date was a wash due to a snow day. As a result, interest waned, and only two students ended up reciting a poem. We do have a winner though, and she'll represent our school at the Massachusetts semi-final recitation contest this March.

Second quarter grades close this Friday. I should be in decent shape grading wise, as unlike years past, I made sure to not have a major essay due right before the close of the quarter. It took me five years to figure this out, but I am learning, albeit slowly.

I plan to add a new section to my blog called "student work." Recently two students did stellar jobs on their Outside Reading Book presentations. One created a movie trailer for Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," which he published to YouTube. I highly recommend checking it out, as it's professional quality. Another did answering machine messages for five characters from Stephanie Meyer's "Breaking Dawn." She captured the characters' essences to the T.

In addition to teaching 9th and 12th grade English, I also have a journalism elective. Today the first issue of our newspaper arrived, and it looks pretty spiffy.

We're currently working on adding content to our website, which can be accessed here. As of this posting, there are no photos or articles online. Our student web editor hopes to get things up soon.

Despite being a former newspaper reporter who has always preferred reading a paper copy of the day's events to an electronic one, I must say that the purchase of my first laptop ($699 w/ zero percent financing for 12 months) is making me a possible convert. Since I graduated from UMass Amherst with a journalism degree in 2000, the field has literally transformed itself.

Journalists now blog live, are expected to be proficient in Internet publishing, and are required to meet deadlines faster than ever. As online audiences grow and print subscribers dwindle, the papers that make it will be the ones that provide the clearest, most timely, most accurate, most accessible online content.

While I do enjoy reading live reporter blogs and articles with clickable hyperlinks, I still enjoy reading the print edition of The Boston Sunday Globe, accompanied by a cup of freshly brewed Dean's Beans coffee.

I write more about this affinity here, in an example of an essay assignment I modeled for my students that was inspired by a Socratic seminar discussion of Steinbeck's The Pearl.

Well, it's official. The seniors are gone, their final exam, quarter, and yearly averages are entered, and in four days they'll have graduated.

This year I taught two classes with seniors. One was World Literature (all 12th graders), the other was Journalism (a mix of 11th and 12th).

For my Journalism final exam, I had students read two newspaper columns from The Daily Collegian, the independent student newspaper of The University of Massachusetts Amherst, where a number of my students are planning to go next year.

After reading the columns, they were asked to write a pastiche, imitating one of the writers' styles in an original, 600-word "senior sendoff." I asked them to include at least five specific memories or places of significance from their time in high school, and bring them to life using vivid and descriptive words and analogies.

A number of them were quite good. Here are a few excerpts:

"Now the end of fun as we know it is approaching. If this were an NBA basketball game, there would be 15 seconds left on the shot clock and Michael Jordan would have the ball. If this were a NASCAR race we would be on our 99th out of 100 laps, turning the corner on the straightaway, sitting shotty next to Jeff Gordon. If this were a bag of chips you would have one more nacho, and you wouldn't know whether to eat it real fast, or savor it in the moment."

Another student reminisces on high school gatherings... "Dances no longer consist of boys on one side and girls on the other, with "DJ Louie" in the middle playing songs like "Casey & Jojo." No. Now you have coalition and prom, which are always introduced with the "alcohol awareness" meetings and the rumors of Breathalyzers, and the people on the dance floor are so intertwined that you can no longer tell who is a girl or a guy."

Another looks back at her time as an athlete... "Walking into the gym, memories of the 6th man play back. Our loud obnoxious cheers make me laugh. Memories of Jim's belly slide in the tiger suit remind me that it's time to get used to a new mascot, new school colors, and new teams. No more Superbowl champs, no more lacrosse, no more night games, no more prep rallies."

And finally, one student reminisced on family struggles and the tragic death of one of his friends his junior year... "I think true depression is not when you're just sad and crying all the time. I think rock bottom is when you start feeling the apathy - that abyss that you don't even feel like pulling yourself out of. That's pretty much how I felt back then."

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I was impressed with what the students came up with. It was true, honest, well-written for the most part, and more importantly, it was real. It wasn't a predetermined, premeditated, cold, analytical five-paragraph blah-blah essay. It was their memories and high school experiences conveyed through words, recorded for posterity. It was dramatic, engaging, and fun to read. It was meaningful. I often wonder why it seems that we, as English teachers, don't assign enough of these authentic, worthwhile assessments.

Bruce Schauble, who pens a rich and insightful blog on teaching, reading, and writing (Throughlines), writes about this in a post he calls Teaching the Ape to Write. I also recommend checking out Essaying the Essay. In this piece, he argues - in part - that teachers actually do students a disservice by forcing them to adhere to the notion that "every essay must must be built around a stated or implied thesis."

Regardless of your personal pedagogical philosophy, it's worth the read.