Before I suspended my trips to Frankford High School to work with the school’s journalism club, we established what would have been a nice rhythm.
Every Thursday, I would come and give a lesson, and the following Monday, the students would use what we talked about and put it into practice by getting out of the classroom and shuttling around the school.
With Pioneer Times adviser Beth Ziegenfus, I established a rough curriculum time line, which you can see below and the details of which I hope to continue to share here.
- Session One: Let students play with cameras and write whatever they want for a sense of excitement.
- Session Two: Journalism basics (lede, inverted pyramid and the like)
- Session Three: Interviewing (what types of questions, how to act, how to approach strangers, why not to speak to friends, etc.)
- Session Four: Photography (basics of using and uploading from a simple point-and-click)
- Session Five: Social Media (basics of using a platform like WordPress and using an RSS feed for, say, a student’s Facebook page — and why that stuff is important)
- Session Six: Video (sometimes troublesome at schools that block video hosting sites, it still helps to teach the basics of keeping videos short, steady and impactful — also touch on using a camera, uploading and posting)
- Session Seven: The Web (this is where you might explain something about hosting, domains and blogging)
Other items that might interest someone starting to teach a journalism club
