Hadley's best 'text' found in the day's news

A journalism textbook actually saved my career in the early days.The principal who hired me in the fall of 1971 looked at my communication minor and declared that I was qualified to teach journalism and advise the school newspaper. Although he felt really good about filling the position, I wondered what I would do after the first week when I had covered everything I knew from the one journalism course I had taken under the umbrella of my communications minor. Consequently, the journalism textbook my predecessor had adopted became one of my best friends. It went home with me every night and helped me stay one day ahead of my class. It taught me every evening and 12 hours later I taught a journalism class. Despite the demand that went with my crazy new job, I was hooked by the end of the year; so when I started working on a master's degree the following summer I chose journalism. I don't know for sure what happened during that summer, but when I came back to school in August the journalism book that had been my best friend the year before suddenly seemed outdated and boring.

Diana Hadley has taught teaches journalism at Mooresville High School for 30 years. Her experience has taught her to rely on timely news events to keep student interested and informed.

I sensed that my students felt the same way, so I started supplementing materials, and that was the beginning of a method of teaching that keeps scholastic journalism challenging and fun for me as I begin to tabulate my career by decades. I can find textbooks I like on the short term, but they become obsolete so quickly and the time between adoptions is so long that I have stopped requiring my students to buy them. We do adopt one of the state textbooks, and I have classroom sets of a variety of supplementary items; but my students only purchase a three-ring clearview binder with a cover designed for our class. Obviously, this works best for a teacher who has been around long enough to have a plethora of handouts, but some of my favorite lessons are generated from the day's news. I still follow a curriculum and specific standards, but I allow for flexibility within that structure. The relevance generates more enthusiasm for my students and for me because it's current; and copyright laws allow spontaneous use of materials for educational purposes. In addition to handouts, the notebook includes all of their tests, homework, and writing assignments. (They receive a table of contents at the end of each six weeks and the notebooks are checked to make sure everything is included.) I have found that even the more tedious lessons such as headline writing are more interesting if I use the stories of the day instead of exercises from a textbook. The Poynter Institute's collection of front pages titled "September 11, 2001" (available soon after the World Trade Center tragedy for just $14.95) provided numerous professional examples of headlines, leads, and photography and design to compare to assignments we were doing in class. On a day-to-day basis, professional publications and/or their web sites provide great links to the day's journalism lesson. What are the editorial writers and columnists saying about the figure skating scandal? Was it fair? Was it accurate? Could these issues be localized for our high school readers? I also keep a videotape on hand to record anything that relates to journalism. (Ten seconds from a West Wing tape of Rob Lowe wadding up papers and pounding on the desk as he struggled with the frustration of writing a speech added some humor to the point I was trying to make.) Sometimes a small comment leads to a great find. One of my students asked why the 1980 U.S. hockey team was awarded the honor of lighting the flame last at this year's opening ceremony for the Olympics. I wanted him to understand the thrill of that victory, so I started searching and discovered a 60-minute ($9.95) HBO documentary titled "Do You Believe In Miracles" that is a gem. It describes the social and political background of the era, the relationship between the U.S. and the Soviet Union prior to 1980, the formation of the team, the team's challenges, and the victory. The bonus was that the interviews it included and the writing of the narrative were so good that I decided to show parts of it to my broadcast and newspaper staff members. The lead for the segment about the U.S. coach: "Herb Brooks never went to charm school." The narrative description of the Soviet team: "government sponsored magicians on ice." Interviews that stand out as pulled quotes: "Herbie threw compliments around like manhole covers." As book adoption reappears in the cycle of my life, I am tempted to embrace the new covers and handy exercises; but course evaluations have convinced me that my students like the binders. They say that watching the empty notebook fill as the semester progresses gives them a feeling of accomplishment in addition to the fact it lessons the load in the age of 40 pound book bags. Occasionally I see former students who tell me they still have their journalism notebook. Since I'm pretty sure they don't keep things from all their classes, I count it as a victory and keep looking for materials to keep all of us interested.