The Reynolds Institute for high school newspaper advisers pulls together all that is journalism.
Last summer at this time I was getting ready to head to Arizona State University for the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ Reynolds Institute. Once there, I was able to bond, commiserate, learn and share with about 35 high school newspaper advisers from around the country. The generous fellowship brought us teachers together to help us not only do a better job of teaching journalism, but to help us become advocates for the incredibly important role a free press plays in our society.
We learned how to write good leads, but we also learned how to take the lead when faced with wary or unsupportive administrators – or a wary or unsupportive community. Why should we overburdened teachers fight so hard to keep a newspaper program going that only makes a bigger pile of often-thankless work for us? Because it’s right and because it’s incredibly valuable, that’s why. Because no one becomes a teacher to get rich or rule the world. People become teachers to do something altruistic – to help, to guide, to better. Oh, and having summers off is pretty good, too.
So why would a bunch of teachers give up two weeks of their much-needed summer to travel far, take classes, write papers? Maybe it goes back to the idea of being the good kind of stubborn that I mentioned in my first post. Or, maybe it relates back to the idea of fulfilling work being enjoyable. It’s probably both, along with the participants’ having that intangible quality of self-motivation.
This year I’m in the unusual position of going back to the institute as a speaker – an invitation that resulted from my MTV experience. I’ll answer questions about what it was like to be filmed for a national television program, and I’ll also talk about how I select editors each year from my perhaps-too-motivated bunch. (If you’ve seen the show, you know what I mean!)
From my end, I’m excited to meet and get to know more advisers just like me who are encountering the same struggles and joys. I’ll only be there two days this year, but that’s still enough time to make new friends and to indulge in that always-welcome feeling of fellowship.
