Installment+7

South of Denver

Chapter 7 - October 11, 2004

It was Homecoming last week, with all the requisite spirit days (western day, wild hair day, etc.) and most of Rock Canyon was excited. Some kids were positively giddy. Even teachers and staff were energized. Let's put it this way: there wasn't much focus to be found last week in terms of class work.

So it was a good week for the 18 students who chose to go to be heading off to Fort Collins for the state journalism convention. After their initial intimidation - after all, there were nearly 1,500 kids there, and dozens of sessions to choose from - they seemed to get into it. The next day, Wednesday, we had a debriefing in which we went around the class getting favorite bits of information from the conference.

Abigail was eager to share the idea that we need to change angles when taking photos. "You know," she said, "like getting above a person's head to make him look smaller or thinner."

"Changing perspective, yes!" I commented. "Isn't that similar to what we're talking about in terms of writing? Aren't we looking for something different to tell readers, just like wanting to give readers different angles in photos?"

I was not sure everyone was getting the analogy, so I pressed on. "Look, imagine a camera with a zoom lens. You can take a wide angle photo (the establishing shot), then get a bit closer to capture a relationship, and go even closer for close-ups or even "parts of the whole." I hurriedly scrawled those terms on the board, and, to my astonishment, several in the class actually wrote them down in their reporters notebooks.

It can be like that with good writing, too, I said. "And don't you like a variety of story-telling approaches? You don't want to always get the same view, do you?"

Devon said, "And we should turn our cameras vertical sometimes. The photojournalism guy showed us that."

I caught myself before saying something dismissive, like, "You mean the way I've been showing you for several weeks?" I was reminded that one of the great things about attending a conference is that kids hear some of the same things their instructors have been discussing, but they now hear them in a different way, and in a different environment.

I thought about how quickly issue one would be here, and about how much I still hadn't taught, and I was momentarily quite thankful to "the photojournalism guy."

We were team teaching, and I wasn't sure what his name was.

The next day I was off to Fort Lauderdale, of all places, to work with 13 students at a NAA meeting that was focused on teen pages in local papers. About half of them worked on both their school papers and on "teen pages." Great kids in a great place. And it occurred to me as I flew home that for some of those students, I was their equivalent of "the photojournalism guy."

It's a weird mix of knowledge, intuition, spunk and advice that produces high school journalism. It was time for me to get back to that.

Three weeks left, and one is fall break.

Jack Kennedy

Rock Canyon HS

Highlands Ranch CO 80124

jkkennedy@comcast.net

jack.kennedy@dcsdk12.org

Note: This is part of a series of columns on working with a completely untrained staff. It is cryptotherapy for me. It may occasionally provide something positive for you. It's all uncharted territory, that's for sure.