Hobbling Along

Hi All-
I write from Marietta, GA where I taught English to 9th grade repeaters and restarted a journalism program. I titled this post "hobbling along" because I currently have a cast on my left ankle having gone wide for a tennis ball the evening school let out for the summer and lost my footing. Snap. I tore ligaments and have a hairline fracture in my ankle. There went my ambitions to play 4-5 times per week. I had even looked up the nearest courts to the Sheraton thinking I could find someone with whom to play tennis during the two-week Institute. I had only recently gotten back into tennis. I used to play but put my racquet down – having kids and teaching English- and 11 years later, the grip had disintegrated. I had become a person who no longer exercised. Now, I have reinvented myself. I am on a team; I have incorporated healthy streamlined habits; and I am constantly trying to improve my game. The leg injury is a temporary setback but it allows me poetic license to foist a metaphor upon you to introduce myself and to ask about some salient points in contemporary student media.

After a couple of years teaching from home for a virtual school, I was hired to teach IB/AP English courses. Three schedule changes and a dept chair retirement later, I had three remedial 9^th grade classes to start the year. It was actually wonderful. I love these kids and they deserve an experienced, creative, tech savvy teacher. It was not a tough transition back to the brick and mortar classroom. Four weeks into the year, the district began downsizing and the school lost a first year teacher who was hired to take on the journalism program. She held the class in my room so I volunteered to continue it. We dissolved one of my repeater classes, transferred them to the other two sections, and I took on journalism for the first time in my 19-year career.

Half the class consisted of earnest “emo” kids that the new teacher had recruited the year before as a student teacher and half were kids with holes in their schedule needing an elective. To compound matters, I had a roster for A day, a different roster for B day, and a group who I met with everyday, many of whom I lost in December. Thus, I got a new batch of students in January to add to the mix of A/B students. The spring batch comprised mostly of students who wanted to be in the class. When I took over, I asked the staff what they wanted to accomplish. They never had thought of an online newspaper so I could offer that as an immediate goal. We could get something up by the end of September. The ASNE site was a godsend. It was what we were visualizing and to have it available, free, and easy to use helped me to gain instant credibility with the students. We managed to get a print version culled from our online submissions published before winter break. Overall, we published eight online versions and three printed editions. Not bad for a newbie to the field!

Leadership emerged, writing improved, and the class became something that students wanted to take. I had over a 100 applications and even the IB kids started signing up. Where “the hobbling” metaphor emerges is that our online paper is robust, funny, current, and detailed. Yet, very few students read it. The student population wants a “paper” paper and that costs money. We inherited a little money from the former journalism program so we got three issues published. The money will soon run out, though. Former advertisers no longer want to support the school. We sold only two ads all year and one was from a student’s father. We know our demographics. We have streamlined. We are on Facebook and Twitter. We are relevant to our audience but there seems to be a community divide. The community that wants us (the students) will not and cannot pay for us. The community that traditionally supports student media (the actual community) sees advertising in the school paper as a wasteful expense in this economy. How can we gain online readership? How can the printed-paper sustain itself? We are hobbled on both fronts. I look forward to hearing what other advisors and professional media entities are doing about these issues.

Looking forward to meeting you- Debbie