Jason Wallestad

We teachers sometimes mistake our own hard work and busyness for good teaching.  Years ago, I used to be proud of myself for spending hours critiquing drafts of journalism stories on the nights before deadlines.  We had a shared Google Doc with a list that students added their names to when they were ready for me to critique their stories.  I would work my way through that list, and as fast as I could cross the names off the top, the list would continue growing as writers would resubmit their stories for additional critiques.  I regularly read 50 to 60 drafts in a night, and I’d usually give up and go to bed in exhaustion before I was able to completely finish.  It took me a while to realize that I was the person in the class who was working the hardest.

Read More

Journalism advisers find themselves in a precarious position in high schools.  We teach our students to stand up for the truth, to speak for those who can’t, and to question authority.  We teach them the power of their own voices and encourage them to put those voices to work in meaningful ways.  We teach them that if they believe in something, they should stand firm, and we teach them that consequences just might be worth it.  And that means, inevitably, that those of us who are advisers will find ourselves sitting in the principal’s office at some point in our careers.

Read More

I used to feel guilty that my Journalism classes weren’t as smoothly run as my other English classes. A passerby could walk into my AP Comp or American Lit classes and have no doubt that my students were actively engaged and that I was properly doing my job.  And then I’d go to my Journalism class, close the door and hope that no one would see the chaos going on within.

Read More

I love my editors this year, and they’re one of the most talented groups I’ve taught, but man, are they bad at paying attention to me.  What was that over there? A shiny bauble?  What was I saying again…

They come to class, and the first thing most of them do is migrate to the desk they’ve sat in all year, spread out three different homework assignments that are due later in the day, open their laptops to start some YouTube music videos playing in the background while they check Facebook and argue with each other about who has more rhythm.  And maybe, just maybe, if I’m lucky, they open up one of the stories they’re supposed to be editing in another tab in their browser so that they can pretend like they’re working if they see me coming near.

Read More

I never intended to be a journalism adviser.  I took my first teaching job in a rural school in the middle of South Dakota, and, like many others who advise high-school publications, I was handed the newspaper advising responsibilities along with my first English classes.

Read More