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What would you want in terms of a protocol?
In the ongoing saga that is the battle over Stevenson High (IL) journalism program, The Daily Herald recently editorially called for an intervention session. An IEP of sorts to plan protocols to heal the damaged relationship between school and students. The online Merriam-Webster definition of a protocol: a code prescribing strict adherence to correct etiquette and…
Timber!
Building off of John’s previous post, tattoos continue to be the scourge of Wentzville, Mo. Yesterday, after receiving approval from principal and The Wolf’s Howl had been distributed during fifth hour, administrators of the Wentzville School District pulled the paper from circulation. The offending item this time was again, a tattoo. On a spread about…
Stevenson board claims Statesman not a public forum; the censorship beat continues
According to Lincolnshire, Il, Board of Education president Bruce Lubin at a board of education meeting Dec. 17, the Statesman, a focal point of censorship issues over the last two years, is not a public forum but rather “an educational and curriculum endeavor.” The whole statement can be found at Stevenson High’s Web site. The…
Can we tell which Tweets are news and which are views? Should we be able to?
Let’s play Devil’s Advocate. Let’s start with the premise that scholastic media’s use of Twitter can cause confusion. Confusion about which Tweets are opinion and which are legitimate news. And sometimes, because of current practices, audiences cannot tell the difference. Why? Because the simple addition of an exclamation point at the end of 140 characters…
California court rules for student in Cyberbullying decision
For now, at least, school officials lost another round in the battle over punishing students for outside school use of the Internet and “Cyberbullying.” According in an article in the Los Angeles Times, A California federal judge said a middle school had gone too far in punishing a student for immature and hurtful comments. “To…
Stevenson censorship shows issues of empowering student expression
By Randy Swikle The censorship controversy at Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Ill., shows the challenges facing those who believe in cultivating free and responsible student news media in public schools. That’s free as in student empowerment within the parameters set by the U.S. Supreme Court in Tinker v. Des Moines Board of…
What you find in the high school newspaper
Today, I took some time to read three online high school newspapers. Take some time and you will discover some great things in high school newspapers. Check out Pelladium (Iowa), The Hillel Periscope (Florida) and Neirad (Connecticut) to see what is on the minds of teens. What I discovered was deligthful, thought provoking and intelligent….
Give yourself the gift of time…for learning
“You can’t teach what you don’t know.” It’s something my friend and mentor Tony Willis used to say, and I couldn’t agree more. The responsibilities of a journalism adviser get bigger and more complicated by the minute as we watch the constant changes in media and technology. There’s so much we need to know in…
An open discussion about online ethics. Please join in.
As more student media embrace what some call the “fifth estate” – new and social media – as part of their way to keep their audiences informed, student journalists may think they need new legal and ethical guidelines. Will existing guidelines, the heart of the fourth estate, still have a role? Will new hardware and…
Illinois paper calls for public discussion of issues at Stevenson High
The Pioneer press, local paper for Lincolnshire, Illinois, today editorially called for public discussion of the issues surrounding censorship of The Statesman at Stevenson High School. Last spring, the paper had editorialized against the students. “Now is the time for Stevenson administrators, faculty and students to share their opinions and hear from people with diverse…
Censorship as an act of academic bullying
Over the course of the past two years, we have seen many students and their advisers go through some deep waters as they have had prior review and censorship foisted on the publications they work so hard to produce. This is a serious issue in American public education that I believe is academic bullying. Yes,…
Most likely to…
We didn’t have senior superlatives at my high school, but if we did, I hope mine would have said “Most likely to practice what she preaches…” Here’s the thing. We say we’re all about empowering students. We say it’s their book. We say we teach, coach, advise, train and then step back and watch….