Foundation Update (Fall 2006 issue)
Direct Lines
The Long View
Wonderful things can happen when you put funds behind a vision. By Sandy Woodcock
In 1978, I began my second year of teaching in what was then a small, rural Virginia county school district.
If you haven’t been a public school educator, then you might not know about the assignment pecking order. The longer you have been a faculty member, the more say you get in decisions about who and what and even when things are taught. Longevity has its benefits.
Being a new faculty member and low in the pecking order, I got to be the newspaper adviser. This was in addition to my other English class teaching duties. The school newspaper was an assignment for which I was pretty unequipped. But I was new and no one asked me.
Taking two journalism classes in college – history of mass communications and basic news writing – led to my selection as adviser. Armed with blissful ignorance, the zeal of youth and the desire to do a great job, I led a group of seven students in the creation and publication of the monthly HighSpot. I knew nothing whatsoever about newspaper layout or design, photography or the thousand other details necessary to take a newspaper from concept to printed product.
Those students taught me much more than I taught them, thanks to the excellent training they received from my predecessor. Because of her, not me, they put out a pretty good product even when viewed now from hindsight and two decades of training and experience.
I took a break from teaching at the end of that year to start a family. When I returned to the classroom five years later, the school no longer had a newspaper.
Lacking a qualified instructor, the program had first floundered and then failed. It went the way of many programs lacking qualified (or even unqualified but enthusiastic) leaders. Without such leadership, the administration allowed it to die.
In 1986, an English teacher without many credentials but with a passion for student newspapers wrote a grant request and secured some funding. That grant breathed new life into the reborn, renamed Knight Life, which continues to publish to this day.
Wonderful things can happen when you put funds behind a vision. For the ninth consecutive year, the NAA Foundation is pleased to support the vision at 15 schools across the United States through the Student/Newspaper Partnership Grant program.
The 2006 grant recipients are:
1. Reno Gazette-Journal
Reed High School, Sparks, Nev.
2. The Daily Progress, Charlottesvile, Va.
Fluvanna County High School, Palmyra, Va.
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va.
3. The Bellville (Ill.) News Democrat
East St. Louis (Ill.) Charter High School
Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, Ill.
4. The Jacksonville (Ala.) News
Jacksonville (Ala.) High School
Jacksonville (Ala.) State University
5. The Honolulu Advertiser
Kapolei (Hawaii) High School
Windward Community College,
Kaneohe, Hawaii
6. Charleston (W.Va.) Daily Mail
South Charleston (W.Va.) High School
7. Chattanooga Times Free Press
Howard High School of Academics and
Technology, Chattanooga
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
8. Los Angeles Times
Camino Nuevo Charter Academy,
Los Angeles
9. The Greeneville (Tenn.) Sun
Greeneville (Tenn.) Middle School
Tusculum College, Greeneville, Tenn.
10. The Times Leader, Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
Wyoming Valley West High School, Plymouth, Pa.
Wilkes University, Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
11. Press-Register, Mobile, Ala.
Daphne (Ala.) High School
12. Milwaukee Journal Scientist
Hartford University School for
Urban Explorations, Milwaukee
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
13. The Atlanta-Journal Constitution
Columbia High School, Decatur, Ga.
14. The Commercial Appeal, Memphis
Central High School, Memphis
15. The News Gazette, Lexingon, Va.
Parry McCluer High School, Buena Vista, Va.
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| Applications for the 2007 Student/Newspaper Partnership Grants will be available on www.naafoundation.org after the first of the year. Deadline to apply is April 30, 2007. |
Jim Abbott, vice president, NAA Foundation, can be reached at abboj@naa.org.
