Let me tell you about my high school journalism teacher

Delivered at the celebration of Bonnie Blader, Oct. 26, 2019

I had Mrs. Blader — and I will forever call her Mrs. Blader, despite her asking me to call her Bonnie or BB — as my high school journalism teacher and newspaper adviser. The name of our paper was the Pirate’s Eye and we served the then-lone high school in West Windsor, N.J. I was the managing editor but in her true socialist style, there were like eight of us in that position.

Mrs. Blader changed the course of my life. It was not just lessons on the structure of stories and inverted pyramid styles, rather it was her belief in us. Specifically in me.

I confess we did not get off on the right foot.

I met her in the fall of 1990. In that first week of journalism class freshman year, during one lesson, my friend Angela and I could not stop laughing. Mrs. Blader had just moved from the middle school to high school and was trying to use a journalism textbook. There was one part of the textbook that asked students to devise a game as a way to tell a story. Angela and I came up with “Shoot the apple off of Mrs. Blader’s head.” Rightfully, she got mad — and we just laughed.

The next day, she came back to class and said, “That textbook is stupid and you guys are right.” And for the rest of the year, we studied journalism by doing journalism. How lucky we were. How right she was. How transformational for students to see a teacher pivot lessons and approach before their eyes.

For an early lesson on writing leads, Mrs. Blader dug into her own work from once upon a time as a journalist. She was writing a story about a whale and led with these words — “Call me Bonnie.” And since that moment when I was 14 years old in her journalism class in high school, anytime someone references Moby Dick or the infamous phrase “Call me Ishmael,” I think of Bonnie Blader.

As the years went by, we would spend countless hours putting the paper to bed in the computer lab. The stories we did were tough: a new climate of standardized tests, the death of a classmate, issues of race and class in high school. You will not be surprised to learn that she pushed us to be inclusive, to develop a social conscience, to embrace journalism as a calling, as a purpose that could really change the world.

In my junior year, Mrs. Blader took me aside and showed me a flier for a “minorities journalism workshop” being held at a local college. I never identified as a minority before that moment. Mrs. Blader told me to apply and wrote my recommendation. I got in, gained professional exposure to journalists around the country, and landed an internship at the Wall Street Journal as a senior in high school. The rest, as they say, is history.

Another student — an African-American girl — applied years after me and did not get in. Mrs. Blader never forgave the program for it and vowed to stop sending kids. She was righteous like that but honestly I respected it. In hindsight, I see how she taught me to stand up for myself in mainstream institutions, that the only way we could change things was by taking a stand.

She was a remarkable teacher in this regard because we were just teenagers but she truly respected us, our thoughts, our writing, our voices.

We stayed in touch over the last 25 years, sporadically. When I got in a car accident, she readily offered Stephen and their helpful advice got me . When my first book came out, she hosted a reading in downtown Princeton. I loved getting her emails — and her passion to instigate change. Her words exuded warmth and wit.

I combed through some recent ones to retrieve the beauty that was Mrs. Blader as a writer.

She told me about her efforts to bring broadband to this region, which I think were just a continuation of her fervent belief that information is power:

“I walked around yesterday and had to laugh at myself for tearing up as I watched a line of new poles being raised by the various sub-contracting entities doing the make-ready work.”

A few years ago, I told her my mom wanted her email address or phone number to thank her:

“Your parents are determined to get me into heaven, I think. I’m not sure I deserve the laurels they’re willing to lay at my feet but I think they are wonderful to think so, and very kind.”

She told me about this center and a vote you all had:

“The voter turnout was pretty big, over 300 people out of the 500 in-town voters. There’s a ‘grudge’ pot being stirred that drew them out and it was a relief to end the night with the winners being the ones who are most likely to keep the town alive rather than those who are afraid of change and resentful at those who are potentially our future.”

About a needy child she was trying to help:

“Her smile would have lit your living room, but her future was also showing so clearly that it was at the same time a fragile lantern in the wilderness that will be her life. … You can’t live here and not live the reality of the left behind. Nor can you not appreciate the sincerity and grasp of a community where the plight of one seems to be the plight of all, and along with any shortness of vision or mean-spiritedness comes that hand out to hang on to someone just barely able to grab hold. … I’m glad there are other people who are tougher and won’t share that feeling who will push on and maybe change things for the better. People like you, Angela, your kids, supported by people like your parents.”

Last year, after the Parkland shooting, a few of us received an email from her:

“watching the students in Florida has put you all in my mind. How stupid are the observers who think 16, 17, and 18 year olds (or 13, 14 and 15 year olds, or 11 and 12 years olds like my granddaughters) cannot launch a moral movement and articulate their tenets and demand change.

I find myself editorializing through broadcasts at the condescension and ignorance and remembering how you all took your position in the world at just their ages, building on the scaffolding set by your prior life experiences. And I want to crawl through the TV or computer to join the teenagers who might be the ones who bring the change. I’m expressing my admiration for the people you were from the first moments I encountered you all. I hope you use your platforms to accurately illuminate this movement. I was not surprised that the student journalists did journalism in the moment, and that they have continued to speak. I find myself with a new mantra: Don’t back down. Don’t back down.”

Her words came at a time I really needed them. I work at CNN and every day come threats to the work we do of holding the powerful to account. And I think they crystallize why she got into teaching, her effectiveness as a community organizer and communicator. Don’t back down, she said. We won’t, Mrs. Blader. You never did. Thank you.

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