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| Photo by Greg Ruhland |
| Adviser Christina Webb describes her lesson plan during an HSJI workshop session last week. |
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Offered each summer for the last six decades, HSJI caters to both advisers and high school students who want to prepare to lead their student publications. HSJI just wrapped up two weeks of adviser workshops. Student workshops begin July 7.
“This has been a special group,” said HSJI instructor Diana Hadley of her advisers last week. A 26-year veteran of the program and former Mooresville High School teacher, Hadley returns July 13 to teach a session for high school students. “This group gelled halfway through the first day, and they’ve not only enjoyed each other, they’ve also supported one another. Each of them has learned from the strengths of the others.”
Hadley insisted that each year, she learns as much as she teaches.
“What changes most is the technology,” she said, adding that issues like First Amendment rights and student time commitments remain consistent from year to year.
In EP 205, instructors massaged their teaching tactics in Hadley’s workshop. They shared their mini-lessons on teaching the active voice, writing leads, the inverted pyramid, attribution, quotations and fact-checking. The other instructors chimed in with feedback.
Christina Webb, from the private Worcester Academy in Worcester, Mass., was one of them. After Googling for a list of summer programs like HSJI, she enrolled with hopes to eventually teach her 17 high school students to write controversial pieces in an objective, unbiased manner. Her brand new lessons center around the construction of reality in war stories, points of view and depictions of truth in the media.
“Just having a week of undisturbed time to get this work done without distractions is great,” Webb said. She is new at Worcester and in her second year advising a newly rebuilt journalism program. HSJI allows her to earn advising credits there. “Networking with the other advisers, their ideas and the shared resources are invaluable.”
HSJI makes an effort to draw high school journalism instructors and students outside of Indiana, like Webb.
“I keep my eyes open for excellent teachers,” said HSJI director Jack Dvorak, who looks first in Indiana for potential instructors with an excellent publications and media background. But, in addition to Webb, he has selected out-of-state teachers over the years: a TV news director from Cincinnati, Ohio; an opinion teacher from New Mexico; and an alumnus, now a journalism professor at Iowa State University, who returns to teach at the HSJI each summer.
Add to the list Ellen Cowhey of the Master’s School in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. There, Cowhey teaches two journalism classes of about 14 students each. Having worked in Adobe InDesign for several years without formal training, Cowhey was much more comfortable designing than when she arrived the previous week.
“I had a lot of my students teaching me how to do this,” she laughed. “So I wanted to get up to speed with them, if not a step ahead, so that both my students and I aren’t wasting time.”
And instructor Bryan Salyer from Batesville (Ind.) High School was incorporating both InDesign and advanced technologies into his own newspaper and yearbook curriculum, such as podcasting, SoundSlides and Web design.
When Dvorak took the reins of the High School Journalism Institute 22 years ago, he continued a legacy left in part by schoolteacher and Indianapolis Star copy writer Gretchen Kemp, who was hired as an HSJI instructor in 1947.
It was thanks to Kemp’s legacy that some advisers last week, such as Lauren Gross, attended the workshop at reduced cost. As Kemp grant recipients, Gross’ and eight others’ continuing education credits as a journalism advisers were defrayed.
Similar financial aid is extended by IU’s Office of Special Programs and Diversity to at least 15 students with journalistic potential, but who may lack the means to attend. Other students seeking assistance might defer to their local newspapers, Kiwanis and Rotary clubs.
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