A Cure for the Senior’s Disease
If you are reading this, you already know about our trip and our blog, but I encourage you to spend the time to read our students’ work, scroll through this journalistic journey of 100 high school students as they experience the political process up close. Being here with them in New Hampshire these past four days has not only reminded me that (given authentic opportunities) high school students can write, and write well, but that the political process matters — that democracy is alive. With kids like these in charge of our future, we are very possibly in good hands.
I have spent most of my time with the 21 student journalists, all seniors, most of them already committed to colleges and their plans for next year. If you know anything about teaching seniors, then you know that by this point in the school year, most of them have caught the illness known as “senioritis.” It’s marked by lethargy, apathy and a touch of haughtiness. These seniors bear no resemblance to that afflicted group. They are energized, hungry and determined to get a story and tell it well. I have been amazed and impressed with their confidence and assertiveness in this pursuit. You need only read the quotes they have garnered from the candidates and the selfies they have posted on our Instagram feed to see what I’m talking about.
When we found Spencer Solomon and Lizzie Clark outside a Christie event at Shooters Pub yesterday, they were exchanging cards with a reporter from Bloomberg News who was so impressed with their interview of the governor, which his cameraman had caught on tape, that he wanted to use it on his show, With All Due Respect on Bloomberg Television the next day (check it out!). Spencer and Lizzie had changed their afternoon plans to follow Christie to his pre-Super Bowl party in the hopes of asking “the big man if they could watch the game with him.” They didn’t get the invite, but Spence got lots of good material for his article, excellent photos and a great story. As I write this, Spencer has found his way into a press-only Christie event.
They have been starstruck for sure, and have had to recalibrate in their writing to maintain a journalistic distance. At a Clinton rally, Talia came running to me to show me the selfies she had taken with former president Bill Clinton. He had wrapped his arm around her in a bear hug. Bill had held onto my hand just a few moments prior to this and we crooned like school girls (well, for one of us it was appropriate).
At times, our students have been the story —check out Courtney Kaufman’s Rubio moment on The Guardian.com. But these have been teaching moments for the students as well. The moment when Courtney was overcome by Rubio’s star presence perhaps inspired Talia’s piece on the what a woman fainting at a Rubio rally says about the candidate. Both CBS and NBC reporters have been following their story. Being interviewed by the press has helped them understand how to ask good questions.
We three teachers working with the journalists feel less like teachers than part of the team. Evan Madin, Jesse Dancy and I have spent our mornings gathered around the news room table not as their teachers, but as writing partners. During the days, we spread out over New Hampshire with the kids to get the story. It has been as invigorating for us as it has been for them. From the pitch meeting, through the drafting and then the editing, we get to talk with our kids like real writers do — in exchanges about idea choices, syntax and diction. Together, we look at the experts for what they can teach us. When Hannah and I sat down about the piece she wanted to write about women in the election, she wasn’t sure if it was news or editorial. She had a story to tell, but also an opinion to share. It took several check-ins and multiple drafts before we hit the “publish” button on her editorial, “Is this a Post-Feminist Race?” In a perfect world, this would be what English class always looks like.
As we filter back to the hotel each evening, tired and hungry, we teachers revel as much as the students do in the buzz of sharing out our stories, writing to deadline, and eating the late night pizza.
