...and the truth shall set you free

By TERRY NELSON Muncie Central High School (Editor's Note: The following speech was delivered at the JEA/NSPA Adviser Luncheon Nov. 10. Nelson is "Dow Jones National Journalism Teacher of the Year" for 2001.) BOSTON -- When Linda Waller, deputy director of the Dow Jones Foundation, contacted me a couple of days ago by email, she tentatively asked if I had my speech completed, and if she could perhaps have a copy to share my message with the different media. "Oh, Linda," I emailed back. "Don't worry. I have it all right here in my head; it's been cooking since August."   How ironic I would use a term like "cooking," when the truth of the matter is throughout my 25-year high school journalism teaching career, my goose has been cooked, my brain has been fried, my temper has boiled, and I've been in enough hot water to fill the bathtubs of all of the wives and children of Osama bin Laden.

But the sad fact remains, I have no lead. So I'll begin in the middle. I never wanted to be a teacher. I found my fourth grade diary a few years ago with clippings from "Our Sunday Visitor "about being a missionary for the unfortunate lepers of deepest Africa. I attended a Catholic School; was the oldest in a large Italian family, never cussed, and already had my religious name picked out: - Sister Mary Terry of Gary... Indiana. But it wasn't until after my first published gossip column in the sixth grade newspaper, "The Thrash (my maiden name) Barrel by Terry," that I became hooked on journalism. My new career plan was simple. I was going to study hard and become the first female editor of the Chicago Tribune. I worked for two Mississippi newspapers following graduation from Ball State University, and reported on powerful, burning issues like the longest snake to be found in the Biloxi back bay area, an alien encounter of two men fishing in the Pascagoula River, and photographed all of the D'Iberville PeeWee Football games on Friday nights. I was a young girl in pursuit of the excitement and attention of the written word in published form with my byline in bold type.That spring, my new husband got an early release from the Air Force, and we decided to return to Muncie so he could attend college on the GI Bill. Since I was going to be the only breadwinner for our little family while he attended college, I applied to every available journalism-type job in the area. My persistence paid off as I was offered the job of a reporter for the local newspaper AND a journalism teaching job at Yorktown High School on the same day. I never intended to interview for that teaching job, but in the words of my now ex-husband, "Take the teaching job - it'll be easy - you'll be home everyday by 3, and just think of all of those vacations we'll have together." So I took the teaching job and found out that teaching under what was then the mini-course system of eight different courses -- including film making, advertising, photography, ninth grade English, speech, theatre and journalism, plus advising my first publications and directing all of the school play productions -- was ANYTHING but easy. I had originally planned to stay in teaching for a couple of years until my husband got his degree and then return to the newspaper business. What eventually happened, however, was a change in the direction of my life through the events of my teaching career which caused me to reconsider my values. And instead of covering the news, I eventually became the news. I remember back in 1969, when I was named editor-in-chief of our school newspaper at the spring journalism banquet, I also found out that my beloved journalism teacher, who we called "Mama Lou," had been fired for the stories we had written in the newspaper. I remember her crying and cleaning out her desk, as she left the high school for the last time. I look back at our newspapers of the late 1960s - and find "terrible" stories like complaining about the student parking lot that was not paved; the mystery meat that was served in the cafeteria; and about the time a rival school shot out the exterior windows on the front of our school -- all stories that the principal claimed made the school "look bad." 1969 was also the year of the Supreme Court's Tinker decision which ruled that students' and teachers' constitutional rights do not stop at the schoolhouse gate. In my senior year, girls could finally wear pants to school, the boys' sideburns extended below their earlobes, and the administration started laying off the newspaper's content. Now fast forward 10 years to 1979, when I was a young fifth-year teacher at Yorktown High School in my tenure year. We had a new principal who fired me for the amount of negativism in the school newspaper, for what he called my "personal negativism" and for refusing to tell him who wrote a letter to the editor, where the author had signed the letter, but asked his name to be withheld as was possible with our editorial policy at that time. That culminated in a 21-hour of open hearings held in the school's gymnasium before the school board and 500 townies watching the drama unfold in lawn chairs; a minister jumping out of the bushes and chasing me to my car screaming I "would go to hell for teaching students to disrespect authority," and the subsequent student walkout the day after my official firing by Yorktown students who marched down the highway to the superintendent's office to demand an answer for reasons behind my dismissal. All 350 students were expelled from school by the angry principal, making one of the Associated Press wire stories across the nation that next day. I eventually settled out of court with the school board after they got additional legal advice and was promised to be able to teach all of the same classes the next year, advise both school publications and direct all of the school plays again. But the board members also promised that the principal would never again punish students for their opinions, and agreed to publicly reaffirm free press rights of all Yorktown High School students, which was the headline of the local newspaper's front page the next day. T he school board members who had fired me were not reelected the next year, and the new school board -- at their very first meeting -- fired the superintendent, the principal and assistant superintendent. The principal never did get a job again in education and now sells log homes kits in the area. My student editor went to double major in journalism and political science at Indiana University, eventually becoming the press secretary of Senator Dodd from Connecticut. The school board also purchased a $20,000 phototypesetting unit for my students to use in their publications work and years later I was elected to the school board who had fired me, and helped to draft a student-friendly publications policy at Yorktown High School. Now fast forward 10 more years to 1988. The results and interpretations of the Hazelwood Supreme Court case have muddied the waters of students' rights and responsibilities, advisers' jobs, and the role of the principal in maintaining a healthy, educational environment. Go another 10 years forward, and this time I'm a teacher again in my fifth and tenure year at another high school - Muncie Central High School -- and under another new principal. Following the JEA/NSPA meeting in November of 1998, my new principal came to my pub room and informed me that I was to meet with the assistant superintendent, personnel director and herself tomorrow. When I asked her what the subject was about so I could get prepared, she answered, "You'll find out." That meeting was a nightmare. The principal began the meeting by saying this had nothing to do with my teaching or the school newspaper, but I was to sign a piece of paper that said I would agree that "students did not have freedom of expression at Muncie Central, and because of Hazelwood that I would turn over the newspaper to her to be previewed before publishing." When I said I didn't understand, the assistant superintendent leaned in and said, "You're not stupid, you understand." "Yes or No?" "Yes or No?" Then he flipped me a thick document outlining the Hazelwood case and implications, and smugly told me to "read this." When I later looked through the document, one sentence really stood out. By using the prior review made possible under Hazelwood, the school newspaper would be characterized as a "closed forum and run like what is found in a military or penal institution." I was floored. I went home and called every informed colleague and legal advisor I knew. Dr. Louis Ingelhart, my long-time mentor and former journalism instructor, told me to sign the paper, then look for another job, because the administration was determined to get rid of me. When I called the Student Press Law Center, the attorney there told me to sign the paper because it was the "students who were going to be harmed, not me," and that if I didn't sign the paper, I would be "fired on the spot on Monday." Overwhelmed with stress, my daughter and I called in sick by the time we made it to Friday, so we could go Christmas shopping in Indianapolis to relax, and because we probably would financially not be able to do so after the events of the next week. Because my daughter and I were not at school on Friday, the teachers and students assumed that I was fired. The head of the history department told a couple of my reporters that blue was the color of Free Press. Jo Ann Fabrics was out of blue ribbon, so the faculty and students wore yellow ribbons in support of me like I was an Iranian hostage. The principal escorted my editor from his English test with two security guards and marched him to the office, where she grilled him about whether I had put the students up to the proposed walkout that was supposed to happen later in the day. Meanwhile Annie and I were shopping in Indianapolis and having a wonderful time. When I returned home that night, and found 100 messages on my answering machine outlining the events of the day, my heart sank. Although I was proud of the students; I knew I was a goner now. But then a miracle happened. Saturday morning, the former superintendent's wife was getting her nails done at a local beauty shop and told everyone, "Did you hear?...Terry Nelson's been fired -- again!" Big news spreads quickly in a small town setting, and by noon, three school board members called me to find out what I was asked to do by the principal and the other administrators. When Monday's meeting came, the principal did not bring out the piece of paper to sign, but instead told me that if she couldn't fire me, she would make it so difficult to teach that I would want to leave. And they were right -- almost. By the late winter/early spring of the year, my students were getting pulled from committees, taken out of scholarship considerations, and generally hurt in a number of ways, as reported to me by other teachers and department heads. I knew I would have to leave at the conclusion of the year because I could not control how my journalism students were being treated. But another miracle happened. The superintendent of schools got caught in a sex scandal in early March with his secretary and let go. The new superintendent, in response to the school being put on the worse academic probation in the state of Indiana, fired or reassigned eight administrators by the start of the next school year -- including the entire four-person principal team at my high school. It was a clean sweep. And here I am two years later, in love with a job I never wanted. Attempts at censorship, prior restraint, prior review and intimidation of journalism advisers and their students will never end as long as there are uninformed and insecure leaders who will try to curtail the truth by bullying the students or their teachers. In my one short lifetime, I can point to personal stories involving the fights for freedom of the student press throughout four decades -- 1969, 1979, 1988 and 1998. Teachers, our struggles will never end. But our students are the voices for those who are too weak to speak, or not knowledgable enough to write in a way that can be informative, fair and persuasive. Our students have the charge of covering stories in a way that will expose bigotry, unkindness and ineffective procedures. If we do not promote "Freedom First" to our student journalists, who is going to be left to cover the atrocities of the women and children of Afghanistan; who is going to be brave enough to question the plans for effective inoculation of the masses against smallpox or anthrax? Who is going to take ownership in a world that has lost its innocence and safety since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001? Recently, two student approached me on the same day with story ideas abased upon their personal experiences for their final editorial grade. The first student was a sophomore girl who asked to speak with me privately after class to see if she could write her editorial on date rape. She had been raped by a senior athlete, she told me, and her parents were going to press charges. I looked up at the girl with the plastic barrettes in her hair, and her childish face with glasses. I remembered she had been absent a lot, now I knew why. The very next hour, a junior boy asked if he could speak to me privately following class. The boy told me he transferred to Muncie Central from his school in Iowa after being chased to a field by a group of boys and knocked unconscious with rocks. The boys began to carve the word, "Faggot" into his back. "They got to the second G before I came to," the boy told me. And he ran away from them, never to return to that school. I asked if he would mind showing me his back. He lifted his shirt, and I saw the crude F-A-G-G. I went home that night and cried. Even if neither story gets to published form, it is a triumph that these students know they have the right to write about the unspeakable; the unthinkable. And someday, if these students were to publish such a story, just maybe they could write it in a way that could help rid their readers of their cruelty, anger and bigotry. Freedom of the Press as exercised in high school publications is NOT about writing stupid, crude or inaccurate stories just because students have the right. But it is about journalism teachers taking chances on students who may have an unpopular topic IF by doing so, positive change may occur. "Freedom First," which is the most appropriate theme of this convention, can only be achieved if journalism teachers and publication advisers have the commitment and the nerve to take on those in charge who may be misinformed, insecure or just plain control freaks; to nurture the next generation of journalists who may be able to improve their world, in a way we could not do in our lifetimes. I contacted my journalism teacher of long ago on Wednesday morning before I flew out to Boston. I had thought about her for years. It took a little investigating, but I dialed a number and spoke to my newspaper adviser for the first time in 32 years. I found she did indeed marry "Farmer Brown," as we had teased her about long ago; had two fine sons, and even eventually retuned to teaching -- but home economics this time, not journalism. She told me she was happy in her life, and she told me she was battling her third round of cancer. I will see "Mama Lou" next weekend when I travel to Morocco, Indiana, and let my teacher of long ago know how much her teachings mean and have meant to me throughout my life. And I had finally found the lead I was looking for. The message I would like to deliver to all of my friends and colleagues who are and have been in the trenches of supporting freedom of the student press -- often times at their own discomfort and risk is this: We are all defined by the character and grace with which we are able to deal with and dispose of the negative, the unfair and the unkind. The bad days in our jobs are what forces us to redefine our purpose and our passion. And the many tough times help make those positive moments with our students and their academic and emotional growths that more sweet. Teachers, I urge you to remain brave in the teaching of real journalism -- and realize that no job, no one person or group of people can force you to make or participate in what you would consider an unethical or immoral decision. A bad job under duress is no exchange for the education of human beings and their pursuit of truth. The students are worth the risk. I never wanted to be a teacher. Now I would not want to be anything else?