2023 Impact Award winner shines light on impact of teacher shortages

2023 Impact Award winner shines light on impact of teacher shortages

By Erinn Harris, MJE, JEA awards chair

“It all began on a sullen afternoon in March when Mr. Schurevich told my English class that he would not be returning to Omaha Central High School next year,” Jane McGill said. “As my classmates peppered him with anxious questions about his plans for the future, a question of my own began to form: How many teachers would be leaving Central at the end of the year?”

This simple question led McGill on a two-month-long investigation into the impending teacher shortage at Omaha Central High School in Omaha, Nebraska — an investigation that shed light not just on the situation at her high school, but throughout Omaha.

For her diligence and determination to share the plight of teachers by using their own voices, the Journalism Education Association and Quill and Scroll International Honorary Society for High School Journalists have awarded Jane McGill the 2023 Student Journalist Impact Award.

When educating student journalists, advisers try to instill into their students the importance of localizing national stories. According to Hillary Blayney, McGill’s former journalism adviser, this is exactly what McGill was able to do with her in-depth reporting. 

“The nationwide teacher shortage has been one of the biggest news stories over the past year,” Blayney said. “Jane took that national issue and investigated the impact on our own school. Once the story was published on our website and in our print issue, local television news organizations, local news talk radio, as well as the Omaha World Herald jumped on the issue themselves. Jane literally broke the story.”

Omaha World-Herald reporter Lauren Wagner saw the impact McGill’s story was having in Omaha and realized the importance of the embedded reporting of scholastic journalists. 

“It’s a well-known fact around schools in the area that teachers can’t speak out to the media, especially in OPS,” Wagner said. “As a high school student reporter in Central, Jane was able to use her connections and skills to publish the views of many teachers, something that is rarely done in Omaha media. It gave teachers at Central — even teachers around different school districts — a voice. The education community was able to speak out through Jane about the issues they were experiencing inside classrooms.”

As reported in her article, “Teachers leaving Central,” 37 staff members left the school at the end of the 2021-22 school year. Of those, 28 resigned from the school system. 

“The public awareness that my reporting brought to the causes of the teacher shortage in Omaha irrevocably changed how I understand my role as a student journalist,” McGill said. “By its very nature, the scholastic press is a community-focused form of journalism. My story was so impactful not because it vilified or venerated teachers, but because it amplified their voices, allowing them to tell their own stories.”

The award will be presented April 20 at the opening ceremony of the Spring JEA/NSPA National High School Journalism Convention in San Francisco.


Founded in 1924, JEA supports free and responsible scholastic journalism by providing resources and educational opportunities, by promoting professionalism, by encouraging and rewarding student excellence and teacher achievement, and by fostering an atmosphere which encompasses diversity yet builds unity. 

Quill and Scroll, founded in 1926, encourages, supports and recognizes individual student initiative and achievement in scholastic journalism, regardless the medium.

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