Hound Collar

I teach five junior English classes and one journalism class at Saint Joseph Academy in Brownsville, Texas. The school has had a newspaper on and off for about ten years. I just finished my fifth year at the school and my second with a journalism class. I taught sophomore English for two years and left the school to work as a technical writer for two years, and then I returned to the school for junior English. What I know about journalism, I learned on the job. My students create a school paper, but I don’t teach much about journalism. I don’t know much about the subject. I expect to learn enough to teach journalism along with the creation of a paper. I hope to learn about photography, layout and design, grading, and journalism in general. I appreciate the opportunity to attend the institute. I read the biographies of the other attendees and was surprised to learn that two others were in the Peace Corps (I served in Paraguay from 1989-91 and spent an extra five years in the country as a teacher) and that one other is from the Lower Rio Grande Valley, where I live. Also, I read on the Blog that Becky asked if anyone was a National Writing Project Fellow. I am. My site is Sabal Palms Writing Project. My school website is www.sja.us. Our paper is “Hound Collar,” and is on the site as an Adobe pdf file. Saint Joseph Academy is about a mile or so from the US/Mexico border and at least half the student body comes from Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico each day to attend the school. I look forward to attending the institute and I hope that after the institute I am better equipped to teach journalism than I am now.