We don't need no stinkin' facts

The most recent stats available from the CDC show that boosted adults are about as protected as people can be from Covid-related deaths. Get this, as of November (it's frustrating how long it takes to compile this data, I know) the chances of death for an American who is boosted is ONE in a million. 

The chances of death in a car accident are 2.4 in a million. The average death rate from the flu is 3 in a million. 

For rational humans, this is great news (about the benefits of a booster shot) and we should be in the midst of a national celebration.

BUT. Here's a chart produced by Kaiser:

Think about this. Nearly two-thirds of Republican voters are not boosted and the rate for Independents is not a lot better.

Um, wow! If this is not evidence of our partisan wackiness, I don't know what is. 

At this point, I have figuratively thrown up my hands about finding some way past this bizarre approach to statistics and vaccines and common sense. Hundreds of thousands of our neighbors have died and more will die, and a FREE and easily available vaccine could have prevented so much pain and heartbreak.

I would like to think that these stats would be the lead story on every news broadcast and in every print newspaper and on social media... and no commentary or interpretation of the facts should be needed. Just put the raw data out there and let people draw conclusions.

But the battle lines have been drawn and reason is NOT winning.

For students and for writers of all ages attempting to make sense of the world, this is depressing news.

A last observation from the data: Democrats -- particularly under age 40 -- are still way overestimating their chances of death from the virus, and that brings its own poor choices.

So our long winter of discontent marches on.

Success in persuasive writing is more likely when we are not fans

One habit that supports better thinking and writing is to regularly READ writers who are willing to share their thinking and writing, and the wider the net we cast the more helpful this can be.

I recently subscribed to several e-newsletters offered by The Atlantic and yesterday the first from David French arrived in my inbox. His post, titled "Declare independence from Covid partisanship" presented a compelling case for breaking free of R's vs. D's, at least in the case of the pandemic (but with implications for other issues).

Quick background: French was a long-time Republication who became an Independent in 2016 (Trump was the last straw for him) and he tries to speak from a place between the extremes. Not a bad goal.

Here is a key paragraph: "The partisan is prone to act like a lawyer, and the party is their client. He or she picks a side, and then—convinced that the common good or social justice is ultimately served by their triumph—behaves exactly how lawyers behave. Are there facts that make your “client” (Democrats or Republicans) look good? Emphasize those facts. Do negative developments harm your case? Find a way to change the focus."

There was lots more and you can subscribe to his e-newsletter for free (an Atlantic magazine subscription is not required), but he got me thinking of this analogy of the lawyer and how that profession needs to operate. 

A vast simplification is that, and he quoted a New York Times reporter on this: both liberals and conservatives suffer from misperceptions about the pandemic—in opposite directions. "Republicans consistently underestimate risks, while Democrats consistently overestimate them.”

Hence the entrenched arguments over masks and vaccines and in-person education and so much more, to the point where in some areas of the country, at least, merely wearing a mask becomes a political statement. 

One analogy quickly can lead to another. It occurred to me that this analogy of partisans acting like lawyers could apply to sports fans, for instance. How many times have we heard friends declare their undying loyalty to a particular baseball or football team or university, proudly claiming that they will stick with that team no matter what? It's not all that logical, of course, and such allegiances don't damage the world, so who cares? 

But I watched some truly gigantic kids from Purdue sort of beat up on my Hawkeyes last night in basketball and I found myself thinking they were like Mafia toughs, while the kids on my team were more likable and skilled... but a bit smaller. Truth be told, I wouldn't mind having some of Purdue's talented and gigantic guys playing for Iowa. But the fan/lawyer in me couldn't embrace that in the heat of the moment.

"Pooh! Pooh! Purdue!" as a long-time friend of mine might say.

In the end, French's "ask" of readers was to try to escape the partisan trap of defending one teams' positions at all costs, and that strikes me as a useful goal.

Feeling skeptical that French's sage advice will win the day? Yeah, me too.

But a well-chosen and well-developed analogy can help readers think about the news, about events, about politics, about life in new ways.

May the best analogy win!

Thanks for the memories

It's a new year -- though at times it feels like a tired repeat of the past two -- but retirements are in the air. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has officially announced that he is stepping down, bowing to the pressure to leave when Democrats can choose his successor.

Of more interest to many is Pittsburgh Steelers Ben Roethlisberger today announcing his own retirement after 18 years at QB. That is just seven years fewer than Justice Breyer has been on the court.

More generally, as of the third quarter of 2021, 50.3 percent of U.S. adults 55 and older said they were out of the labor force due to retirement, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the most recent official labor force data. That is an increase of 2.2 percent from pre-pandemic estimates. Much of that may be temporary (due to Covid) but I don't see how we can be too surprised to find that as Baby Boomers age, the percentage of retired people rises.

Using that same logic, it is difficult to pretend to be surprised that employment is very tight. When we combine more and more older Americans leaving the workforce while birth rates have fallen and immigration has cratered, there has to come a point when there just aren't enough workers to go around.

People make choices and those choices have consequences. I read today that the world has missed any chance of erasing the pandemic and that one reason is that the virus just doesn't kill enough people to burn itself out. Think about that. Over 850,000 are dead (probably lots more) due to the virus, but that's just not enough.

I have seen some odd posts about Republicans being in trouble because more R's are dying than D's (though that was not the case in 2020). The problem with that view, statistically, is that not enough are dying, to be blunt. More to the point, though, is that as the country splits geographically in political choices, a pandemic that decreases voting turnout for one party by a fraction of a percent just reduces the margin of victory from 20 percent to 19.8 percent (I made up the numbers, but you get the idea).

Media pundits and media in general constantly seem surprised (shocked!) at things that were inevitable.

Once again, journalists have a tough time with statistics and math in general. America is a big place, with over 330 million citizens. Things can change, of course, and relatively quickly (as in gay marriage acceptance), but most analysts are skeptical about how fast our current political divides can evolve away from "I'm a R, so I must make fun of... (fill in your choice here)" or "I'm a D, so I need to make fun of... (fill in your choice here)." 

Just as most Americans have grown tired of the pandemic (I would guess that my grandparents grew tired of WWII), and most appear to be open to simply declaring victory (or accepting some sort of truce) over the pandemic and simply moving on, they also wish for some sort of rapid change in how we all treat each other. Our impatience produces some progress, but it is never enough.

Back to retirement, someone leaving a job or position after many years can bring some excitement to many, with interesting potential "new" people in those jobs. There will be a new justice on the Supreme Court, and there will be a new quarterback for the Steelers. "New" is exciting... until the new wears off.

Some "retirements" are more involuntary, like the Broncos firing Vic Fangio as head coach and today announcing a new guy. Lots of shuffling, in lots of areas of life, and that is hardly new.

I hated to see David Letterman "retire" from his late night gig, but Colbert is doing fine and it won't take long until the only time we think much about Dave will be during a CNN documentary on late night hosts. Who thinks about Jack Parr, or even remembers that name? 

Everyone gets replaced eventually. 

The challenge is in doing something positive prior to replacement.

The challenge in lots of persuasive writing is finding intriguing solutions

The primary type of argument writing is to address a problem or challenge and propose one or more solutions. It is in the solutions that we find creativity, since there is little point in simply repeating solutions that have previously been offered or tried.

That is why I was interested in a piece of legislation introduced last week in the Colorado House that would allow liquor stores to offer fresh food for sale along with their traditional beer, wine and liquor.

At first glance, the idea seems wacky, I suppose, but that's part of the nature of creativity. The idea is that there are large swaths of the state that are essentially "food deserts," lacking grocery stores and thus encouraging unhealthy eating habits. But in those same food deserts, there are lots of liquor stores. Why not combine the existing infrastructure with some new options for consumers? The bill would not require anything of liquor stores, but simply allow adding limited fresh food options.

The first response from industry groups and many legislators was the typical "this won't work because..." Making laws is not improv, of course, where the rule is that you can never say "no," but must think, "yes, AND..." 

For writers, that automatic tendency to look for reasons to stick with "no" is really limiting in any sort of problem-solution essay. If our first tendency is to claim that nothing can or should change and that everything is too complex or intractable to warrant trying something new, then there's no good reason to write at all.

It is easy to imagine giant grocery chains, like King Soopers, not liking this idea one bit. And the state has settled on a grudging compromise between grocery stores and liquor stores, with each getting a decent percentage of the business. 

What appealed to me about this legislation is that, no matter how unlikely the bill might be in terms of passing or solving the problem if passed, it at least highlights the issue and forces people to consider options or changes while not requiring huge expenditures on infrastructure. 

There were serious proposals some years ago to add mini-weather stations to U.S. post office vehicles. The idea was that USPS vehicles go nearly everywhere in our vast country, and that a "hole" in our weather prediction services was a limited number of reporting stations. Robust computer power could gather and report vast amounts of weather data and thus help the weather service increase accuracy and timeliness. There are an estimated 200,000 USPS vehicles in operation.

This proposal went nowhere due to some added expense (adding the tech) along with our puzzling national disagreement about weather, climate change, and (let's face it) hatred of government.

There may be a slightly better chance that post offices may be able to offer some basic banking services in the near future, making things like cashing checks and depositing money a bit easier. In fact, there was such a service in the U.S. from 1910-1967, and there is a pilot program running now to bring it back. 

There are for-profit companies that will fight this, of course, including check-cashing services that earn fees and perhaps offer loans with very high interest rates. 

But there are over 34,000 post offices in the country, which is about the same number as all U.S. Starbucks, McDonald’s and Walmart locations combined. That's a lot of coverage and a lot of convenience, particularly for the poor. Big banks don't make anything cashing checks, at least directly, so this idea may actually make it.

The point is that creative solutions are the pay-off for readers of problem-solution essays. Most of the time we are all too familiar with the problems.

What sticks with us are the solutions, even if they need further development.

Paradoxes abound in American attitudes, leading to confusion

I was thinking this morning about the weird irony of two big protests that were held in Washington, D.C. this past weekend and how the messages being sent seemed paradoxical.

The first was the annual March for Life, and their protesting against abortion rights, among other issues.

Here is their purpose in their own words (from their website): 

The right to life is a human right. Our defense of that right is a joyful witness to the beauty and dignity of every human person.

The March for Life is an inspiring, peaceful, vibrant, and joy-filled rally of women, men, young people, and children from all across the country. Every year, tens of thousands of pro-lifers converge on the National Mall and march on Capitol Hill on the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling which legalized abortion in all 50 states. It’s the largest annual human rights demonstration in the world. But this is not just a protest… TOGETHER, WE GATHER TO CELEBRATE LIFE. We celebrate each and every life, from the moment of conception. We envision a world where every life is celebrated, valued, and protected.

I will simply note that celebrating the beauty and dignity of every human (I'm not sure what a "human person" is, exactly) seems like a great thing. Not as great a thing (from my POV) is that the march demanded that government create or modify laws and sanctions that punish those who don't meet the group's definition of "right to life."

Hours later an anti-vaccine rally was held in the same basic location. The crowd's numbers were smaller -- they haven't had years of tradition to build bigger crowds -- but the basic message was that government should stay out of people's lives and decision-making. Some speakers were clearly wackos who doubt basic science while other claimed to be fine with vaccines but violently opposed to mandates of any kind.

The paradox was that many of the same people either attended BOTH rallies or at least support their basic views. Those views can be roughly summed up as asking for government to regulate abortion (seeking to end it altogether) while simultaneously arguing that government keep its regulations away from regulating or mandating vaccines, and thus depriving Americans of choice.

A consistent philosophical position might be that government needs to keep out of ALL personal decisions in American lives, but humans are rarely consistent and often find themselves holding diametrically opposing views about life and government. The logical paradox is simply ignored.

This human tendency can lead to muddy argument writing, of course, since logos is so important in developing a clear claim with strong support. Arguments that rely almost entirely on pathos (emotions) are not convincing in the long term.

The new semester is already a week old and I am sure I will be confronted by all sorts of logical fallacies in student writing... I always do. 

That doesn't make students poor writers. It might simply indicate that complex issues do not lend themselves to simple solutions.

One of my class rules, for many years, has been to "act right" while in class. In general, people know how to "act right." Otherwise our lives would be complete chaos. But it's in the specifics and the unusual or emotional that "acting right" can become food for debate.

Most people would agree generally with the idea that we should do what we can to get along with one another, for instance. "Do unto others... etc." 

But some issues -- and abortion and "personal freedom" seem to be two -- don't lend themselves to connecting people.

That's why I always urge writers to avoid those sorts of issues in their academic arguments. Or holiday dinner tables.

Wrapping up my agonizing over a quick presentation

The presentation to some Colorado advisers on Saturday went fine, despite the relatively few in attendance and despite my time coming at the very end of a long Saturday morning. The best thing about it, from my POV, was that I was prompted to think a bit about what I might do were I back in the classroom right now.

If it wasn't clear from last week's posts, let me state this clearly: I have no magic solution to the stresses and the challenges and the constant political grenades being tossed at teachers (from all directions).

One of the anchors for my little talk was this paradox: "The better things are, the worse they feel." I borrowed this from the late Richard Farson's terrific book "Management of the Absurd," now sadly out of print but still relevant in so many ways.

Here's an example: I heard a guest on Bill Maher's HBO show simply throw up her hands and declare, "I'm over it." She was referring to the pandemic.

Distressingly, Bill was in full agreement. He's no anti-vaxxer but he thrives on being a gadfly, of sorts, finding his joy in pissing pretty much everyone off from time to time. The basic argument for being "over" the pandemic was that it had just gone on too long and that it is time to... well, it wasn't clear. Just ignore it?

I thought about Americans who persisted through four years of World War II. If only we had such sage insights in the 1940s, with people, inconvenienced and uncomfortable and not able to live their lives as they always had, simply calling the whole thing off. 

It's not that I don't appreciate the impatience of people accustomed to instant almost everything. I will curse out loud when the "smart resume" function on my Xfinity system is not available, allowing me to effortlessly skip commercials on some network shows. Just today I had to log off Google and then log back on after something went haywire and I couldn't write this very blog post. How dare "they," whoever they are?

I can vividly remember not being quite so impatient, or spoiled, earlier in my life. After all, there were fewer choices, fewer options to exert power, and fewer distractions for most of us. It wasn't a better time in most ways, even for the very rich (compared to the technology and opportunities the very rich enjoy now).

We are greedy. Give me even a small leg up in life, and I will look for another boost. I won't be satisfied with my little bit of progress.

A general rule for successful therapy, I have read, is that it does not lead to satisfaction, but to new and different feelings of discontent. Most people who can afford therapy don't "graduate" or declare that all is well. They simply elevate the level of their complaints. This is great for the therapy business, BTW.

Successful revolutions are rarely led by abject slaves -- illiterate, starved, and beaten. Revolutions tend to come from the upper middle class, if not the wealthy, and often grow from people reaching some level of education and physical comfort and sensing that things could be different. 

I suspect that much of the hatred and fear and frustration we see in the country boils down to sheer impatience with the pace of change.

That is why I proposed that teachers tighten their focus on their own schools, on their own staffs, and on their own classrooms. Change can be rapid in more confined situations. And local changes can create wider change.

It always has.

I found an argument in a random e-newsletter that provides a presentation 'hook'

Just in time, a newsletter from an Atlantic magazine writer named Tom Nichols arrived in my inbox yesterday, and though it focused on big picture American politics it provided a foundation for me to work with as tomorrow's presentation looms.

His post ended with the following four statements that he offered as a starting point for bringing the nation back together (slowly, perhaps):

1. For anything to work at almost any level of government, citizens first have to accept that they live in a community.
2. They have to begin with an assumption that finding common ground for solutions, however imperfect they may be, is possible.
3. They have to believe that other human beings are sensible and amenable to goodwill.
4. And they need to be honest about the past, and to dispense with false nostalgia.

What if we asked our own students to consider everything they do in media with the above four statements in mind? What if the way we structure our classes and our curriculum considered the four statements?

From #1, we might focus on our built-in community of interest -- our school -- and keep in mind that the vast majority of students and teachers are actually OK with being there and want things to get better. Unlike mass media, we have the opportunity to really get to know our audience and the various interests that audience possesses. We may be frustrated by the slow pace of change in a state or nation, but can often see positive change happen in real time on our campus.

From #2, we might think more deeply about how to find solutions and how our students can avoid the trap of constant criticism and focusing on what is not working. Yes, news tends to be "bad news," but our lives are not unremittingly disastrous, day after day. And we cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

From #3, we need to think more about what we encounter in our hallways and classrooms and athletic arenas and realize that most people are pretty good the way they are. We really wouldn't want everyone to think and act exactly like us, would we? Who wants a world of identical androids?

From #4, the key is to recognize that the "golden age" or whatever that means to us, had plenty of flaws and problems and disappointments. That includes our somewhat misty memories of school prior to 2020. And let's face it: we aren't going back to whatever we had.

Teachers/advisers likely have more difficulties with the above than most students, who have an indispensable optimism and faith in the future. We educators need to tap into those energies.

So what might we expect if we focus on those four foundational statements? 

Less cynicism and whining. More suggestions for solutions or progress. Less cancelling and more trust, even though there may be disappointments along the way.

Less longing for the “golden years” and more focus on what can come in the future.

Less “global” and more “local” -- use a tightened focus to share helpful, inspiring, enlightening, and personal stories from our school community.

Maybe the Nichols article fed my "confirmation bias," but I don't really care. 

The event is tomorrow.  

Wouldn't a recipe for success in teaching be great?

I'm still trying to nail down my basic presentation strategy for Saturday and am well aware that I possess no recipe for success nor any previously invisible pieces of advice to help harried teachers survive and thrive despite the pandemic.

Superficially, at least, teachers attending a conference are hoping to find some "answers" or "tricks" that they can take back to their classrooms and apply. I know I have sat in hundreds of learning sessions at conferences of all types, always wondering if I will discover some almost mythical device or idea or resource that will turn my teaching and advising career around.

I stole shamelessly from all sorts of very smart people over the years, incorporating tactics and strategies and readings and "rules" into my everyday practice. I'm not sure if those many presenters I admired thought they were "pulling back the curtain" on the Truth in any way or not, but anyone who volunteers to present a session has to have some confidence in what they are proposing or sharing.

That makes this Saturday challenging for me, since I don't have much confidence in anything I might discuss or advocate for in the face of the continuing pandemic, the increasing political pressures, and the overwhelming number of options to explore. Plus, my classroom teaching experience seems like something from prehistoric times (ending in 2010).

I mentioned some specific movies that feature great teachers yesterday. All of them at least begin with students sitting in neat rows of desks, with all the recognizable traditions of education. The teacher stands in front of the room, well-dressed and excited for the day. The students sit sullenly (or alertly, if they were trying to impress the new instructor), daring the teacher to teach them, to engage with them, to break through their protective shells.

In other words, we can all immediately feel comfortable with the basic classroom situation, which helps audiences enter into the spirit of the film until the inevitable twists and dramatic moments occur. Those moments are when audiences are expected to see education a little bit differently and with (maybe?) a bit more hope.

Here's the thing: in every movie the breakthroughs and the emotional moments and the new ideas happen when the movie gets beyond the standard lecture situations where everyone in the room hears and sees the same presentation. The "aha!" moments always require one-on-one conversations, or at least very small groups. 

John Keating (Dead Poets) works with an entire class but only a select few really take his ideas to heart (and perhaps misunderstand them a bit). In the classic final scene, with students standing on desks and repeating, "O Captain, my Captain," I am always struck by the many students in the room who sit with their heads down, not budging from their seats. 

In "Dangerous Minds," it is not until the naïve teacher gets out into the community and begins to understand the complexity of her student's lives that her lessons become more effective and inspiring.

In "To Sir With Love," a sort of team is built by Sidney Poitier, but good storytelling can only juggle so many characters with any depth. Viewers (and readers) can't keep more than a handful of main characters in their heads. We can only care about so many people at once.

Those observations take me back to Ernie Pyle and his advice about covering a sprawling situation, like a war (or school). 

I often think about the many one-on-one conversation I had with students, late into the night as we worked on the latest edition of the paper or yearbook deadline. I think of reading stories line-by-line with writers as we talked through each rhetorical choice and each word choice or syntax selection. I think about the many conversations with students at 9 p.m. or later that had nothing to do with journalism and everything to do with relationships and community. 

I always liked the performance aspect of teaching, of finding ways to get a large group laughing or nodding in agreement or just seeing things in a new light. But those performances were not where education was really occurring. My best teaching happened after school hours.

On Friday I need to decide on what to include in my little presentation and what to leave out. I also need to more fully imagine my audience and what they need and want. It may just be a pep talk from an old geezer who has been around far longer than they.

Some may be hoping for some secrets to be revealed.

They won't be, and maybe that will be the point.

You know you are floundering when you quote Stalin

I wonder if the idea of tightening our focus (alluded to yesterday) is enough to create this coming Saturday's presentation to advisers.

The naïve idealist in us all may not want to embrace this restricted strategy. After all, we are not islands and the world in an incredibly complex place. Unintended consequences besiege us no matter what choices are made and constant tinkering is needed to make progress, no matter how sound the original plan.

Just as I feel powerless to do much of anything in the larger world, high school students must feel just as powerless, and likely more so. I grind my teeth, for instance, when Colorado's own governor resists mandating masks or vaccines, despite his support for both and despite the clear benefits for public health. But he's up for reelection this fall, and many voters hate the very concept of mandates or being forced to do much of anything. And there are real questions about just how much benefit any particular action will produce.

But focusing on a much smaller community can help us, and our students, explore and report on actors and actions that more directly affect us. In keeping with several of my earlier posts on writing, "when you want to tell the story of war, tell the story of one solider." 

I rarely quote Joseph Stalin, but here goes: "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic." We might consider it the ultimate cynical strategy for a leader or government to adopt. But we can reimagine the quote as something like, "a single death can provide a compelling, insightful story, but a million deaths obscure the individual human stories."

It's one thing to read some article in the local paper about teachers under stress and how many are seriously considering finding a new career. It's another thing entirely to get to know ONE teacher who is dealing with overwhelming stresses and who is agonizing over leaving the career they love (but can't live with).

It's one thing to see a TV report on thousands of students being damaged psychologically by the pandemic. It's another thing to get to know one such student and how she deals with the stresses, or does not deal with them. 

I like this train of thought for the presentation because it connects directly with what we know about good writing and about the potential of writing to effect change. Over and over, I find myself typing the same advice to college writers: "Tighten your focus and dig deeper. You can't solve the world's problems in one 800-word essay."

I saw a headline today that said that the Omicron variant is cresting in its damage, but that up to 300,000 more Americans might die by March, if trends continue. I'm sad to say that the statistic was so large and so beyond my ability to personalize that I didn't even pause (until now) to give it much thought. What happens to our sense of empathy when we begin imagining the exact time when the country will pass 1 million deaths from the virus? What happens when total deaths becomes a sort of box score?

Teachers are bombarded by the bad news (and, remember, most news IS bad news) just as much as their students and the rest of the community. But the news is much less bad when teachers consider individuals and how even fleeting interactions can help that one troubled sophomore. 

I dimly recall thinking that entering teaching was my way to "change the world." I had this overly idealistic picture in my head of Sidney Poitier in "To Sir With Love," or of Bing Crosby in "The Bells of St. Mary's" or (later) "Dead Poets Society" and "Dangerous Minds." 

I wouldn't be surprised if many of those who will be joining me on Saturday had remnants of similar hopes, and confronting the reality that change and improvement happens slowly and separately might be the source of much of their frustrations and angst.

Tomorrow I hope to dig in a bit to some of those mass media films and look at what strategies and tactics the idealized teachers in those movies used to inspire.

A hint: they were not based on lecture halls nor on TV speeches.

Sometimes you realize that you need to explain who Yogi Berra was

The working title for my upcoming presentation is "The future ain't what it used to be." This is a shameless rip-off of a famous Yogi Berra quote but it seems appropriate.

I assume I will need to provide many in attendance some basic information about the fabled Yankee catcher and his "Yogisms." I have often had to supply the references to my jokes, from old Steve Martin routines to Three Stooges bits. My standard remark to students when we were studying Shakespeare was that they needed to know the famous lines and characters so they could get the jokes shared by people who DO know the lines and characters. 

But let's get back to planning that presentation.

High school teachers are not so different from their students in one key way: they all dislike sudden or unplanned changes. In fact, ANY change is a little threatening. Routines may be a bit boring but they are also a foundation to return to no matter what is going on around us.

What could be worse that not having any idea about what school might look like next week, or tomorrow? We all count on the great majority of those in our classes to be in attendance, for instance, but how do we cope with extraordinary numbers of students needing make up work? And missing teachers requires ill-prepared substitutes... and everyone knows that even the finest subs can't replicate the experience of the teacher/adviser.

My advice to subs over the years, for media classes, came down to naming the editor(s) and suggesting that the editors can be counted on to organize the day's activities. That is great advice until the editors are stuck at home for a week with the virus. Then Plan B must go into effect... almost always some sort of video. We may have some great videos on hand but let's face it: watching videos in a classroom is a poor replacement for each student watching at home in comfort. At least we know everyone was at least in the room while the video played, I suppose.

One of the "futures" that many media advisers have in mind involves some sort of deadline calendar and steady work flow. Teachers love being able to post "to do" lists and planning charts. Right now these are changing daily and that leaves teachers and students uneasy. Our top students really do appreciate their academic planners.

So where are we to find comfort and routine? THAT question is what I need to think about prior to Saturday.

One idea I am kicking around is encouraging the advisers I will meet with to consider narrowing the coverage focus for their students to the campus or school community. My theory is that as professional news coverage and politics and pop culture have become more and more national in scope, we all find ourselves fixated on events and personalities that have little to do with us.

It's sort of like how many readers/viewers note that the TV news or the front page of the local paper does not resemble their own neighborhoods or streets or schools. There is a clear disconnect between what makes the news and what goes on around us. 

Most of our neighbors' political views or TV viewing habits or personal challenges are not obvious. Most of us wave at our neighbors automatically and most days there will be no fire in the immediate vicinity. Of course, when there is a fire, we will certainly pay attention. That's the nature of news.

A second general idea is that there will be a future, that the pandemic will become endemic, and that science and government and business will combine to return society to a safer, less-tormented state. Young people are naturally idealistic and often charmingly naïve. Many students are quite excited about the future, about college, about new freedoms and new adventures. They are incredibly resilient.

Teachers need to embrace some of that idealism and optimism while finding ways to channel youthful energy into productive activities.

For media advisers, this means rededicating themselves and their students to covering their own campuses in more depth and with more sensitivity.

I will continue this thread tomorrow, including some examples

What can we give educators to help them through this crisis?

I agreed to do a sort of wrap up/pep talk/inspirational presentation to 15 or so media advisers this coming Saturday at Castle View HS. The event begins at 9 a.m. and includes some professional speakers and plenty of sharing among educators, with the purpose being, as the marketing states, "TLC, no PLC." In case you are not familiar with those acronyms: Tender Loving Care vs. Professional Learning Community.

PLCs have been in favor among school officials for some time and tend to focus more on curriculum and management issues. TLC seems quite appropriate for the special pressures today's educators are under.

A problem is that I have not been in a classroom during the pandemic, though I certainly have been paying attention and have had some conversations with current advisers and teachers (not to mention children and grandchildren who are living with the Covid realities for two years).

I'm not sure what to say as of this moment, so I may use this blog to do some reflection and try out some ideas "on screen." After all, I am never quite sure what I want to say until I see it on paper or on my monitor.

But here is one strategy that I am thinking about: when the world seems overwhelming and depressing and overcomplicated, there might be something to rededicating ourselves to a more constricted world... maybe just the school campus or community.

It's the same approach we often use in developing research topics or almost any sort of explanatory or persuasive writing: tighten the focus on provide depth over breadth. Make the scenes come alive. Take readers where they can't go. Highlight the specific and let readers make some of the inferences about more general points and claims and trends.

Students are as interested as anyone else in society's big questions and controversies, and many of our top students would like to explore those issues and share their own ideas. And, just like most adults, solutions and progress are not easy to find. 

The entire enterprise of high school, for instance, seems wobbly right now. The pandemic has endless effects, most unanticipated and most calling for change or limitations. There may have never been a time in the past 50 years when it was this difficult to be a teacher or student.

And yet, young people are still looking to the future, and teachers can find some comfort in doing the same. 

I hesitate to write "This too shall pass," since it is so vague and so unsupported in any particular instance. But the bad times DO pass. The Spanish Flu was horrible and at least as damaging as Covid, but the planet survived. Human nature did not change fundamentally and we can guess that this pandemic won't change human nature in any significant way.

Tomorrow I will try to flesh these ideas out and discuss how focusing more on our community might provide enough energy and purpose to get us through the next few months or years.

Hindsight is 20-20, of course, but it can also inform the future

So, how should the Regis Jesuit magazine leadership, the administration, and the archdiocese have worked to find that "sweet spot" that supports strong thinking and writing, balances varying defensible views, and maintains strong ties between educators and students?

As H.L. Mencken once wrote, "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." This is the sort of statement that should be placed on a large poster and displayed in every journalism classroom -- or maybe just every classroom.

If you are looking for some sort of "quick fix," or easy recipe, or even the ONE action to take, you are bound for disappointment. But here are some ideas.

First, there needs to be an ongoing conversation among writers, editors, and advisers about what we publish. Someone needs to constantly be asking key questions, such as, "Why would readers be interested in this right now?" and "What reactions are you hoping for/expecting?" and "Who are the key audiences going to be for this?"

There needs to be an editing process or some sort, moving any article from raw ideas to gathering of information to rough draft to publishable draft, and rushing that process is not a good idea.

There will never be a perfect piece of writing but we can create structures within the staff to avoid major foul ups and incomplete reports or opinions.

On the administration side, the Regis Jesuit principal could have looked for something more targeted, like simply withdrawing the commentary that caused the problems. Removing the entire issue seems like too broad a stroke. Better yet, if the principal simply sat with the editors and suggested that THEY remove the article until it was in better shape, or at least made clear the pressures from the community, THAT could build relationships and demonstrate the sort of conversations valued by the school.

The archdiocese really should have kept out of the controversy, demonstrating a confidence in the official church position as well as in those hired to guide students in their education. It is possible, of course, that there would have been no controversy without the archbishop's angry reaction.

One "solution" to problems with the student media is to simply do away with student media, and Regis certainly has that power. In fact, public schools have that power, as well. There are lots of instances of principals simply deleting journalism courses, reassigning advisers, discovering that the budget can't handle publishing expenses, etc.

That might be considered the nuclear option and most adults would prefer to at least appear to support student expression... as long as that expression is not threatening or confrontational. 

My advice to advisers and staffs is to do everything possible to make certain that the reporting and writing is strong and defensible. Strong thinking and writing provides its own protection against those who would prefer to hide what students are thinking and worried about and simply interested in.

Wouldn't it be great if the wider church, the school leadership, the advisers, and the student journalists all felt like they were on the same side, working through various opinions and options?

It's too late now for much in the way of compromise or better procedures, but out of such debacles may grow stronger policies and more understanding of differing views.

Here's to hoping that the Regis community can eventually move in that direction.

Education and exploration of ideas often comes second to raw power

I spent 20 minutes or so on the phone yesterday with a reporter from the Aurora Sentinel, providing some background and insights into the Regis Jesuit censorship case. I tried to be as careful as I could, avoiding casting too much blame and emphasizing that the entire situation is a mess.

One of the last things I said was "No good deed goes unpunished," which is a classic line that proves to be true over and over. It's not that we should stop trying to "do good," but that we should be aware that the world does not always appreciate those efforts.

In regard to Regis, it is laudable that the school developed a robust publication policy that attempts to provide more free expression rights than most parochial schools might be comfortable with. In fact, that very policy is now being used to attack the censorship decision, which may be fair but also reminds us that an alternative might be a policy that makes administration or other adults the owners and editors of the "student press."

There is an old saying, that "freedom of the press belongs to those who own a press," and that seems relevant here. Regis "owns" the press, so to speak, while Constitutional government owns the public school press. The press should not publish just anything, of course, but journalists get the job of creating professional standards and enforcing moral and ethical codes.  

As I have mentioned several times, non-public schools have opted out of the sorts of protections that many public school students and teachers enjoy.

Of course, that legal argument is not very satisfying, particularly if you are thinking that the goal of education should be to explore options and arguments and to become independent and informed citizens. That is more an ethical and philosophical question and the school is now in an awkward place, simultaneously claiming that Regis fosters free and independent thinking while drawing hazy lines that must not be crossed.

A commentary written by two Regis graduates in today's Denver Post emphasizes these ethical and philosophical points, and the article serves as proof the quality of their education (it's well-written and compelling) and as a counter to strictly legalistic arguments.

A fair question is "Did mere publication of one opinion piece, however mediocre in quality, threaten the entire institution (the entire archdiocese) to the point where it needed to be removed?"

As usual, the content of the article ended up being MORE widely distributed as part of the reporting. Most community members would never have noticed the commentary had it not been for the school censoring one of its students and removing TWO full-time employees.

I also recognize that there are many community members who are not fans of student free expression. And many mistakenly believe that anything published in a student publication is the ultimate responsibility of an adult and of the school. 

Most people haven't spent much time thinking about the difference between official pronouncements and personal opinions, between informal and formal essays, and between media being "open forums" and, in the case of Regis, "limited open forums."

The co-writers of the Post commentary wish for Regis to support the same level of free expression as public schools, and suggest that their own experiences led them to believe that de facto they HAD those rights in their own time at the school.

Politics and religion have become more and more mixed together and this is not just a local trend. Regis Jesuit is not immune to the conflict. I just wish everyone had found ways to avoid such drastic casualties.

Commentaries are one of the few places for student journalists to be personal

For the final post prompted by the recent ugliness/censorship of a student's commentary about abortion (basically supporting this as an option in clear contradiction to Catholic dogma), let's discuss what the best personal commentaries share. 

Whether we call them personal commentaries or informal essays, they tend to feature first person POV. Something needs to be the exigence, or prime motivation, for the commentary, and that should be both timely and accessible to readers.

In the case of the controversial Regis commentary, the article MIGHT have been in response to the writer thinking about recent court hearings regarding abortion, though that was not clear in the actual piece.

On the other hand, there has been no change in Catholic teaching about abortion and readers were not given any new insights into the issue. The writer wanted to make a persuasive argument and perhaps change some opinions and practices surrounding the abortion issue. I would suggest that this issue is now long past logic and factual reporting -- and that the young writer had taken on an impossible task.

What MIGHT have been possible is to share a personal story, perhaps based on the woman the writer knew who (maybe?) had an abortion prior to later having two children. Sharing that woman's story in a sensitive and compelling way might have helped any reader see that the issue is deeply personal and quite complex. 

But the actual article mentions this option only in passing and incompletely before heading into a series of unsupported, uncited statistics and vague arguments.

The writer and her advisers would have been wise to continue talking about options prior to publishing, and that would be true whether any controversy arose. We read commentaries and columns (the difference simply being that columns are regularly appearing commentaries, with the writers establishing an ongoing relationship to readers) to find new insights and new emotions and new people.

Readers tend to enjoy reading about people very unlike themselves, as well as about people very like themselves, but with hidden depths and anecdotes and emotions.

An informal essay is nearly as much about the author as the audience and such articles often allow for more "voice" from the writer than the standard news story. The personality, the diction, and the unique perspectives of the writer provide much of the energy for the writing.

A formal essay (in journalism, these are staff editorials) relies more on ideas and logic and careful support for claims. Editorials tend to build to some sort of Call to Action. We want readers to do something or think differently.

An informal essay might also include a Call to Action, but a CTA is not required. 

A final thought: writers must always keep their audiences firmly in mind. For student journalists, they must move past the idea of their classroom teacher being the prime audience. In the Regis Jesuit case, there were at least four distinct audiences. Writers may not be able to serve them all equally, but we should at least be aware.

Those audiences were Regis students, Regis faculty and staff, Regis parents, and (crucially) Denver Archdiocese officials. 

For media advisers, one job is to keep reminding passionate and (maybe) naïve students to at least think about how all potential audiences might respond to a particular argument.

Students see things more narrowly. Advisers need to see the bigger picture.

Strong thinking and strong reporting rarely gets writers (or advisers) into trouble, and perhaps that is the final takeaway from this unfortunate mess.

Thinking about protections, or lack of same, as well as the importance of leverage

NOTE: You can find the original opinion piece this post refers to on my Jan. 10 entry. Today I write a bit on news vs. opinion and how ethics and the law enter into the controversy.

On the most general level, we start with this statement: "There is no such thing as a false idea." This statement comes from a 1974 Supreme Court case and basically means people can publish and share incredibly wacky ideas without any sanctions from government. 

The First Amendment only applies to government censoring or limiting expression, though this fact often confuses students and adults alike. Twitter, for instance, is not bound by First Amendment rulings and traditions, and CAN ban users who consistently publish false ideas. Hence, the defeated former president being removed permanently from the platform. He can shout and complain about his "rights" being taken away, but he has no leverage to use to be reinstated.

Student free expression rights do not extend to private/parochial schools, which is relevant in our abortion commentary case. In Colorado, for instance, we not only have a state statute protecting student expression but a recent amendment to the law that protects teachers from sanctions when they are simply supporting student free expression rights.

I mention this because Regis Jesuit fired the two teachers who advised the magazine but did not sanction the student writer. Those teachers enjoy no protection in this particular instance. A cynic might note that the student's parents pay $20K to the school each year for tuition, so booting her from school carries a clear cost for the school. Losing two well-liked and well-respected teachers also carries a cost... and very mixed publicity.

The school may have been given an ultimatum by the archbishop: fire those teachers or lose Catholic school accreditation. Even a relatively progressive Jesuit school can't afford that. The teachers may have stood their ground and refused to resign, thus forcing the firing actions. There may have been other incidents that preceded this one that play into the termination decisions.

We likely will never know.

Had this mediocre commentary (in terms of writing and thinking quality) been published in a public high school in Colorado, the story would be quite different. First Amendment protections would apply, as the school is part of government and cannot violate free expression rights. The advisers might face some criticism from parents or even administrators, but their jobs would not be at risk (unless the school could prove negligence or failure to educate). 

Regis Jesuit as an institution is now in the uncomfortable position of not being able to live up to what it hoped was a fairly extensive respect for student expression (and there is a written media policy, developed by advisers, students, and administration). 

Regis now looks a bit hypocritical, evidently afraid of what one poorly argued opinion article might do to the school community and to the Catholic faith. Again, the pressure may come from the reactionary local archbishop, who is quite up front about wanting to remove the current Pope. 

Journalism students may protest, of course, but they and their families chose to NOT be covered by free expression rights when they opted out of public schools. 

A parochial school like Regis tends to respond to parent protests -- after all, without all those tuition dollars, the school can't exist. This is not all that different from how customers can influence King Soopers management over the strike which commences tomorrow.

If customers refuse to cross the picket lines, the grocery behemoth will lose enough money that some sort of deal will be struck. Government won't have anything to do with that.

I see that Canada has had remarkable success in raising Covid vaccination rates by instituting a law that you can't enter a liquor store without proof of vaccination. Vaccinations have quadrupled over the past week, after this went into effect.

It all comes down to who has the leverage. The advisers of the magazine at Regis had none. A large group of parents might have some. The Canadian government found a powerful lever to use.

Tomorrow, I plan to discuss what a good informal essay (personal commentary) looks like as a way to wrap up analysis of this issue.

Poor writing plus questionable advising equals a sad situation

In local publishing controversies, the above opinion article, published in the Regis Jesuit HS "Elevate" magazine in December, led to retraction of the commentary, the firing of two full-time teachers (the adviser and assistant adviser of the publication), embarrassment for the author (I have removed her name), and incredible pressure on school administrators from the Archdiocese of Denver.

As is often the case, everything about this situation is complicated -- and few will ever know all the details and context that produced the controversy.

But let's start with the content of the writing, and an observation about the headline. The word "out" should be "our" and that is a simple typo. But the credibility of the magazine is immediately damaged when the largest type on the page was not properly proofread. An irony of proofreading is that headlines are often assumed to be correct -- after all, they are so large and someone likely typed them directly into InDesign.

A "forest for the trees" situation.

The subhead (or deck) is puzzling. Who is "confronting" and did the author really mean "reconciling" or "balancing" or something else that might be looking for some common ground?

Persuasive writing is best when there is a clear answer to "why am I reading this right now?" and the lead to this article doesn't provide anything timely as an answer. THAT should have prompted a conversation between editor or adviser and the writer in hopes of sharpening the argument. 

The last sentence of the opening graf is "Abortions aren't uncommon. Up to 1 in 8 women get an abortion in the U.S." But the opening sentence of graf 3 states: "By the age of 45, up to 35 percent of women in the U.S. have had an abortion." A reader could be forgiven for being confused. I certainly am. 

These two figures do NOT add up, with the two statistics, neither of which is attributed to any solid source, widely different. That makes readers wonder what else in the essay might be nonsense or poorly thought out, or poorly researched

The second graf is the one that struck me as potentially the beginning of a moving human story about choice and lack of choice and how one woman struggled with childbearing decisions. You can read it yourself, but notice that the first sentence is missing any sort of explanation or follow up. Was the writer claiming that she knows someone who chose an abortion before giving birth to two children? 

In my next post I hope to grapple with the more global questions this commentary raises, particularly about how ethics, the law, audience, and "community interest" intertwine. And on Wednesday I plan to explore what makes a good informal essay, or personal commentary.

But one way to sum up the entire situation is as a mess for all involved. 

Teaching and learning during a pandemic is like...

I have mentioned Frank Bruni's weekly round up of great writing, and his most recent post featured a series of great sentences that all made use of similes.

In case we are a bit hazy on what a simile is, here is the quick definition: a figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid (e.g. as brave as a lion, crazy like a fox). A quick clue is the use of "like" or "as" in the comparisons.

I copied four simile examples below.

Here’s the science writer Dennis Overbye on a special magnifying glass for the cosmos: “Sitting in a spaceport in French Guiana, wrapped like a butterfly in a chrysalis of technology, ambition, metal and wires, is the biggest, most powerful and, at $10 billion, most expensive telescope ever to be launched into space.”

This comparison of a telescope with a butterfly just before it emerges from its cocoon gets the reader "seeing" the device as about to make a big difference in science. There is no literal wrapping or protection, but that triplet of "ambition, metal, and wires" contains all sorts of information. BTW, who knew there was a spaceport in French Guiana?

Here’s David Segal describing one of the people in his article about a Dickensian workhouse in London becoming — of course! — luxury apartments: “Mr. Burroughs, a 77-year-old chartered accountant, speaks carefully and barely above a whisper, as if he were narrating a golf tournament.”

A comparison only works when readers comprehend both sides of the simile. Here the writer assumes the reader has watched some golf on TV and immediately conjures up the quiet voices (so as not to disturb the golfers and fans at the scene). There is also a sense of propriety and tradition in this comparison.

Here’s Gail Collins, from her weekly online “Conversation” with Bret Stephens: “Registering as an independent is like telling a charitable fund-raiser that you want to help by sending good thoughts.”

Ms. Collins represents the more progressive side in the weekly conversations she has with a fellow New York Times columnist. They like to keep things civil and a bit light, despite the often serious topics they discuss. Her point here is clearly that being a registered independent voter is an empty gesture.

Bret differed. “I’m happy as an independent,” he wrote. “It’s like getting to order à la carte, whereas everyone else is stuck with a bento box of things that don’t actually go together.”

Mr. Stephens represents a more conservative POV and a year or so ago he changed his affiliation from Republican to Independent. His point is that being an independent allows for more flexibility and choice and avoids being stuck with individual positions and policies he disagrees with. I had to look up what a "bento box" is, I blush to admit -- it is a multi-compartment box containing different courses of a (usually) Japanese lunch. 

But I got the gist of his simile from context, so his somewhat obscure reference didn't damage his simile too much. That reference was a great reminder that writers must always consider their readers and calculate just how far to push the diction and syntax.

A well-written simile can clarify things, ideas, and people and should become a tool to use (sparingly) in your own writing.

When in doubt, tighten your focus

Here is the promised continuation of my commentary on one sample piece of reporting can help us in the classroom. The original story can be found here, on the Washington Post website.

A snowstorm that catches millions of people off-guard and that produces all sorts of dramatic and revealing events and reactions might seem too big to effectively cover. Even a traditional school event like a dance or an assembly or Homecoming might seem a bit overwhelming to student reporters.

Where should they start?

My answer to this question was to invoke the reporting wisdom of Ernie Pyle, the famous and revered WWII reporter who invented the concept of G.I. Joe and tried to focus his reporting not on the generals and politicians but on the "grunts," the soldiers in the trenches and in the field. This may be slightly edited from Pyle's original statement, but the quote I put up in my classroom was, "If you want to tell the story of a war, tell the story of one soldier."

My localized version of this advice was, "If you want to tell the story of a high school, tell the story of one student."

I added that no one person's story was sufficient to provide full coverage but that an accumulation of focused stories, each showing students in action, each sharing student thinking and emotions, might provide the sort of insights that readers desire and need.

When I found this story about Senator Kaine and the focus on his specific experience while stuck on I-95 due to snow, ice, and (I assume) a healthy dose of human error and simple chance, I couldn't resist the combination of "one American" and prominence, along with the oddity of being stuck in a car for over a day.

Average reporters might be inclined to begin with an anecdote about a prominent person who has become part of a larger story, but then quickly turn to official reports, statistics, and a series of almost random direct quotes from a range of witnesses.

What I like about this story is that it is organized as a real story, not at all different from a piece of fiction (with the important difference being that all the facts come from research and interviewing and observation. 

Readers get a clear main character and a classic conflict -- man vs. nature -- along with a vivid setting. There is a resolution -- Kaine finally gets to his office in D.C. -- that is satisfying.

Structurally, this story makes use of the "hourglass" shape, with a lead that provides the 5Ws, sets the scene and introduces the character(s) and conflict. Part of this "story shape" is called The Turn, where the reporting moves from providing the basics for scanning readers to a chronological retelling of events.

The Turn happens here: 

Officials said later in the day that they hoped I-95 would be cleared and open again by Tuesday night and that they had been sending emergency crews to try to reach still-stranded motorists, while pledging a full investigation of what went wrong.

Kaine said he left Richmond at around 1 p.m. Monday for a pressing voting rights meeting later that day with other lawmakers at the U.S. Capitol, believing he had plenty of time. The commute typically took him two hours.

The rest of the report tightens to one person in one car, bringing in the telling anecdote of some neighbors sharing oranges with their fellow travelers. Even the photos move from those drone views of snarled traffic to the inside of a vehicle, to one point of view.

This story cannot exist on Twitter or other social media because the reporter needs enough time to follow the events through to some sort of resolution. Instant publishing is too restrictive.

The story also cannot exist without reporters who keep asking about what came next, about what our main character was thinking, and about what the main character remembers about interactions with supporting characters (the family distributing fruit). 

I would point out to students that the story ends up not really about a snowstorm -- after all, they happen quite regularly -- but about how one person dealt with the challenges.

And to add one more layer here: there are no stories about weather. There are only stories about people or animals reacting to the weather. 

All stories must be about people.

If students learn that, all will be well.

Young reporters need some tips on finding news that readers want and need

Student often complain that "nothing newsy ever happens at school," which mostly means that those students are not clear on how to define "news." That complaint may also translate to "please don't make me think too much about what happens at school." 

Or it might mean that they are so immersed in school that they would prefer to focus on something and somewhere else.

Advisers must always be ready for this attitude and have some prompting questions and provocative examples of finding interesting stories amid life's routines at the ready.

Journalism instructors need to discuss the elements of news from the very beginning of any journalism course. There are many factors that go into deciding if something is news or not, but two of the most compelling are "prominence" and "oddity." 

Prominence recognizes that people who are well-known often get more intense interest from readers. Bad things that happen to famous people are particularly attractive. "Hey, that guy is just like me!" 

Oddity, or the unexpected or the exaggerated, might be the most powerful news element of all. 

And that takes me to this story lead from today's Washington Post, following up on reporting that I mentioned yesterday about the big snowstorm.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) felt bad for the stranded families packed in their cars and minivans all around him on Interstate 95. Then, when the temperature dipped even lower overnight, as he shivered alone in his car, he started to envy the larger groups, wondering if maybe their cars were warmer.

“It was cold,” he said in an interview around 10 a.m. Tuesday about his overnight experience being stranded on the interstate. “It was very cold.”

Kaine, a former Virginia governor, was one of myriad people trapped on one of the state’s busiest thoroughfares in below-freezing weather for hours — more than an entire day — on what was supposed to be a typical commute to work at the U.S. Capitol from Richmond. Instead, it turned into a marathon nightmare of fuel rationing, hunger and sleep deprivation for no doubt hundreds of people, although officials said they did not know exactly how many people were trapped on the 48-mile stretch south of Washington.

The report begins with the "who" of the story and immediately places this well-known politician in the midst of a scene. We can imagine the reporter asking questions like, "Help me understand what you saw and felt last night." Or perhaps, "What were you thinking as the hours stuck on the road dragged on?"

Beginning journalism students often feel the necessity of including the questions they asked. So a first draft might include something like, "When asked about how he was feeling 12 hours into being stuck on I-95, Sen. Kaine said, " ...."

It is important to get into this truth: readers don't need to be reminded that the journalist was asking questions. Readers want the answers (and they can infer what questions MUST have been asked to elicit certain responses).

But back to prominence and oddity, this story demonstrates both elements clearly. Even former governors and current senators may fall victim to nature -- just like us regular folks -- and the idea that people might be stuck on a busy interstate for over 24 hours, without food, water, bathroom facilities, etc., certainly is odd (and a bit horrifying).

In tomorrow's post I will dig into the narrative structure of this lead and how it is a model for student writing about an event.

Great reporting must precede great writing

For beginning reporters, using professional published stories is a great way to show them how newswriting works, from the individual pieces to how complex decision-making affects writing in the media.

Here is the lead from a Washington Post story on the big snowstorm that surprised the D.C. area this week.

Three people were killed Monday evening in Montgomery County when a car collided with a snowplow hours after a winter storm dumped several inches of snow across the Washington region, an area largely spared from blizzards during two years of intermittent pandemic shutdowns.

One person was critically injured in the crash, which occurred about 6:45 p.m. on Columbia Pike at Briggs Chaney Road in the White Oak-Burtonsville area of eastern Montgomery, officials said. Initial accounts indicated that the car had run into the rear of the plow.

The storm brought power outages, traffic snarls on major highways and untimely closures of coronavirus testing sites.

As adults grappled with school cancellations and the suspension of Metrobus service, children ventured outside to celebrate the most snow to fall in one storm since January 2019 — a time when antigen testing was not a holiday ritual and mask-wearing largely was confined to Halloween.

Students must learn that most of the 5Ws and H questions need to be addressed in order to provide readers with a complete account. Who, what, where, when, why and how are still the key starting points in reporting. If young reporters can't answer one or more of those basic questions, more reporting is needed. Some answers simply aren't available immediately, but future stories can fill in the blanks (and should).

An easy choice in our sample lead (above) was to feature the three deaths caused by the storm (though that causation is a bit too simple, since there was likely some human error involved in the crash). Names of the victims may not have been released in time for this story, but the dead are clearly the "who" here. "What" is that they were killed. "When" is Monday evening, while "where" is the Columbia Pike intersection listed. The "why" tends to be complicated but the immediate cause was a car running into a snow plow. The "how" is a bit sketchy, as officials usually take some time to reconstruct how crashes occur. Excessive speed? Unavoidable skidding? An unanticipated stoppage or turn? 

I would also point out to students the way this report combines the snowstorm with the pandemic, and would ask if that was inevitable or whether the reporters and editors of the Post could have made other choices.

My first thought was that the lack of big storms over the past couple years is clearly unconnected to the pandemic in terms of cause and effect. Both are challenges but they just happened to overlap. 

My second thought was that it is relevant to show readers that life is complex and that events certainly can be made worse (or better) by other factors. That fourth graf was a stretch, with its goal (maybe?) to provide some context for how long it had been since the last big snow in D.C. "Wow! It's really been that long?" you can imagine a reader thinking. "I can barely remember a time before Covid."

Would this news story connect with readers without the added pandemic connections? That is a great question to present to student reporters. An in-class activity worth a few minutes might be to ask students to write a new version of this lead but without any pandemic references. After all, the first big winter storm in over two years is inherently dramatic and newsworthy.

A final discussion might get into how journalists make decisions about what to include and what to exclude in their reports. Lots of discrete events occurred during the storm. There were many outages, non-fatal accidents, school and business (and testing center) closings. The story led with deaths, not with the millions who survived the storm. As always, most news is "bad news."

Reporters should cast a wide net, so to speak, and gather all the information and insights they can. The final published stories, however, need some curation, some analysis, and some structure. 

The connection between gathering information (reporting) and presenting information (writing) is the very heart of journalism and students need to practice these basic skills repeatedly.

Teachers benefit from reflecting on the past before plunging into the future

The first assignment encountered by students of my new Student Media Advising online course -- just finalized in December and unlikely to be taught this spring -- is that they create a simple blog site and write a reflection of some sort at least once per week.

Reflecting on what happened recently and on what options MIGHT be pursued or what improvements might be made seems like the single most important action a practicing educator can embrace. But it likely takes some sort of external stimulus, like a class assignment, to force teachers to take those few minutes a week (or day, if you wanted to be really focused) to examine their practice.

From an instructor's point of view, such a series of blog posts helps me better understand each student's needs and experience level, with few expectations from the writers (who basically earn all the points available each week by participating) and with plentiful options for written dialog between us.

I spent most of my own teaching and advising career just scrambling from day to da and from challenge to challenge, rarely taking a few minutes to step back and analyze what I was accomplishing and how I conducted classes, built some sort of academic culture, etc. 

Teachers tend to beat themselves up, often based on a small body of evidence -- like a class discussion that never went anywhere and left the teacher confused and students frustrated. Many times I would stumble into the teacher's work area at Rock Canyon and calmly state, "My god, I suck at this." And I was the department chair with 30 years of teaching experience.

The one thing teachers need the most is a bit of time to think, to analyze, to decompress, and to refocus. Five minutes of passing time between third and fourth hours is not even close to enough of a breather. An entire planning period is not enough. Winter Break is not enough.

So the first thing I chose for the online advising course was the reflective blogging assignment. 

I have already started rethinking this, however, as I increasingly realize that this course is likely to get reasonable enrollment only through tightening its time span -- I'm looking at a four-week, intensive version right now.

That's the challenge right now. Can I create a version of the semester-long course, with its many opportunities to pause and reflect on what is happening in class, that can fit in a more attractive four-week course. 

Four weeks respects the need for teachers to both expand their skills and knowledge and find some downtime to relax and recharge.

My first thought is that the reflective blog has to go. Most classroom teachers will opt for a summer session and they won't have "live" students to work with, try ideas with, share stories about. The best we can do (maybe?) is to find ways to have advisers look back on the preceding semester or year and prompt some reflection. 

That may be a fine strategy for advisers who advised the previous year but one target audience for the course is the brand new adviser (maybe brand new teacher) who may not have experience from last year.

Lots of unknowns, obviously, and it is likely that all the debate and adjustments for this course must stem from me, as the author, trying to anticipate how to proceed. 

Wrapping up 2021 and looking ahead to what has to be a better year

It's a new year (I waited until Jan. 1, a Saturday, to post) and this blog series totals 224 entries from the past year. At an estimated 550 words per post, that amounts to 123,200 words -- enough to constitute a novel (maybe two, according to most definitions) if there were any narrative threads to be discovered.

But it's a good example of how writing more often and sticking with it can produce quite a quantity of material in a relatively short time. This is why my preferred teaching strategy in my writing classes is to ask students to write a large number of posts and essays, but to keep each individual post or essay relatively brief. Most of my assignments suggest a maximum of 600-800 words, though students may write as much as they need to make their points.

The first day of new year is a traditional, though artificial, excuse to make some resolutions and my resolution for this blog is to transition it to building instructional materials for my newly completed online media advising class (which is approved and available for spring, but which has had no publicity and no one enrolled as of today). 

An online course designed as a crash introduction to the world of advising student media is likely to get more takers in a summer session, and we will have to see if this CSU Global Campus course can pick up enough students to actually run.

It was sort of fun and certainly challenging to create the course. Unlike a traditional in-person class, it's tough to gauge what changes are needed, what additions or deletions could smooth things out, what options or assignments produce the best responses and speak most directly to what students (who are also teachers) want and need.

My hope is to take some time, using this blog as the vehicle, to slow down a bit, analyze how the course unfolds, and think about how a 16-week course might be condensed to an 8-week summer session (or even a 4-week session, which might appeal to many teachers who would like to free up more of their precious off-time).

I may still comment on current events, weird and wacky trends, pop culture, and personal ups and downs on occasion. 

One trend I hope develops is 2022 slowly emerging from the pandemic. The last two years have been a struggle for so many. Kathleen and I haven't suffered much particularly, other than general angst and feeling a bit cautious about traveling. 

So 2021 ends up a bit of a "meh" in my informal rating system for years. Hey, "meh" is better than disastrous.