Can Journalistic Learning Help Teens Feel Less Overwhelmed?
Written by Ed Madison and Bo Brusco
Middle and high school are stressful times. You can probably relate. Teens today are feeling especially overwhelmed because in addition to worrying about fitting in, passing classes, and planning futures, they’re also concerned about school shootings, political unrest, racial injustice, and climate change.
Rising to meet these worry-ridden times is Journalistic Learning, a systemic approach that infuses journalistic strategies into English Language Arts courses. More than 2,600 students across 17 states have engaged with this approach wherein they chose a local issue to research and investigate, interviewed community experts on the matter, and published a report on their findings. Qualitative research and documentation indicate that Journalistic Learning is empowering students to feel less overwhelmed by helping them make sense of today’s tough topics.
Oregon middle school teacher Jon Lebrousse asked his students what they were worried about at the start of a journalistic project and jotted down their answers on a whiteboard. They listed everything from homelessness to climate change.
“This is the world we live in, and that you’re inheriting,” Lebrousse said to the class, pointing to the issues they generated on the board. Then he asked, “Should we just ignore it and pretend that this isn’t happening — is that how we should move forward?” His 12 to 14-year-old students replied: Absolutely not.
Journalistic Learning isn’t just about helping students develop skills like critical thinking and media literacy — it’s about using these skills to make sense of the world’s intractable problems and take action. Research shows that Journalistic Learning helps students identify, address, document and communicate about complex problems that can make a difference in their communities and in their own and others’ lives (Beghetto & Madison 2022).
The benefits of this approach are reflected in the concept of Antifragility. As social psychologist and author of The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt explains, antifragility is the psychological principle that “there are some systems that get stronger if they get pushed around, knocked around.” Haidt uses bones and immune systems as examples — things that need to be challenged and tested to maintain or increase their strength.
School is the perfect testing ground for students when it comes to addressing big issues of the day. Classrooms are a safe environment where students have access to a trained, professional educator who can support and guide them. By not shying away from intractable problems but methodically addressing them in the classroom through Journalistic Learning, students learn how to make sense of these issues, dispelling their often overwhelming effects. Lebrousse observed this in his class.
Toward the end of leading his students through a journalistic project, he said, “There’s no denying that our kids are well aware of all the hard stuff in the world, and to be able to use [Journalistic Learning] as a way to help them understand and help support them through talking about it and learning about it feels a little less scary, honestly.”
“[It’s] been a really empowering experience for them,” Lebrousse concluded. “I can’t think of a better way to help them dive into the stuff they’re worried about than to take control of it a little bit by learning about it and writing about it.”
Support Students in These Overwhelming Times
Journalistic Learning Initiative (JLI) empowers students to discover their voice, improve academic outcomes, and engage in self-directed learning through project-based storytelling. We train and develop educators to lead Journalistic Learning units in their classrooms so that their students can cultivate critical thinking, media literacy, and effective communication skills as they investigate and report on issues unfolding in their communities.
Please consider donating to support our mission by clicking here or visiting journalisticlearning.org/donations.
