Samples of Exemplary Journalism
TEACHER INSTILLS A LOVE OF WORDS, BUT THE LESSON IS ABOUT LIFE
This article presents a profile of a distinguished high school English teacher, Phil Holmes, who, after 35 years of teaching at an elite private school, spent the last five teaching at a public charter school. While he faced some initial challenges transitioning from a school that served some of the richest students in Los Angeles to a school where half of the students receive free or reduced-price lunches and nearly all of the students are African-American, ultimately Mr. Holmes' teaching methods proved efficacious in both settings. Through vivid classroom scenes, the article shows that Mr. Holmes sets high expectations for student learning, connects his lessons to past work as well as real life, and pushes his students to think. Interviews with former students as well as detailed descriptions of Mr. Holmes' classroom demonstrate the impact a truly talented teacher can have on his students. Read More
EDUCATING TEACHER KELLI FUNK
This story takes the reader on a journey with University of Pennsylvania student-teacher Kelli Funk, who grew up on a farm in Lancaster County, PA, and details her trials and tribulations in trying to reach a class of inner city students at West Philadelphia High School. Despite her best efforts, and to her great frustration, she fails to teach them much biology, but they teach her volumes about their lives and the shortcomings of their educations. The story is rich with classroom scenes and portraits of Kelli, her students, and her cooperating teacher, a worldly-wise veteran who patiently watches Kelli try her best. Read closely the passage of classroom dialogue and description that can be found about halfway through the article, beginning with: "We're going to try something new today." The punch line of the article: after this experience Kelli still desperately wants to teach in Philadelphia, the district dallies too long in offering her a job, and she winds up in a suburban school closer to home. Read More
GOOD TEACHERS? HARD TO DEFINE
This story is both a broad early survey of the status of various efforts to improve teacher quality and a detailed profile of a single teacher, Judith McGonigal. The piece is sprinkled with concrete details of what the classroom looks like and how the students react to McGonigal's teaching. It also includes a helpful review of the issues associated with holding teachers accountable for results. Read More
DIVISION FLARES UP OVER MATH
The first part of this four-part 2003 series from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel nicely illustrates the ongoing controversy over math education. The vignettes represent different philosophies about how best to teach math and come from various grades and schools. Read More
ROOM 3-223
More than a decade ago, New York city schools chancellor Rudy Crew announced that his goal was that all third graders would learn to read. New York Times education reporter Jacques Steinberg took Crew seriously and decided to report on his vow by following the teacher and students of a single classroom for a school year. The resulting series is full of the sorts of mini-portraits, vivid scenes, and larger insights that come with intensive reporting over a long period of time. Look for the segments that depict the teaching in the classroom. The reporter chose the classroom because it had a demographic mix of students with varied reading abilities and a willing, interesting, and dedicated teacher. Structured as an occasional series throughout the year, it let events unfold. The reporter has to be especially careful in such a situation because missteps can damage relationships with the subjects and jeopardize the project. Also, by not waiting until the end of the year to publish the entire series, the reporter must make choices carefully about which students will prove most interesting in their journey. This series won the 1997 EWA Hechinger Grand Prize as the year's best example of education reporting. Read More
Struggling to Teach Reading's Joy
Part One of the Room 3-223 series shows the great variance among the third graders in a single classroom, offers several examples of informal assessments, and shows the teacher, Mr. Kesler, working one-on-one with students. Read More
Winning One Small Battle for Literacy
Part Two of the Room 3-223 series shows how a teacher's close monitoring of a single student's progress-and his encouragement to get her to challenge herself with more difficult material-can motivate a student to try harder and to gain confidence as a result. Read More
At Age 8, Crossroads in Reading
Part Four of the Room 3-223 series shows the challenge facing teachers who try to get special help for a student who appears to be far behind. It also demonstrates how satisfying it can be when such a student makes progress. The piece captures the dramatic narrative of learning, as a student makes the journey toward understanding and skill. Read More
The Classless Classroom
Part Six of the Room 3-223 series shows how difficult it is for a teacher to meet every child's needs-those who are advanced and those who need to catch up. It also shows how important it is for the teacher to establish clear rules about classroom comportment, so that students know how to work productively and independently. Read More
One Third Grade Is Moving on, and Mostly Up
Part Nine of the Room 3-223 series shows that success and failure coincide in the same classroom. Mr. Kesler, the teacher, comes to a great insight. The students who were already reading well, blossomed, benefiting from being allowed to read books of their choice while being taught to figure out unfamiliar words from the context and from pictures. But those who were furthest behind needed more explicit instruction in decoding the sounds of the letters and combining them into words. Mr. Kesler bemoaned his lack of training in how to provide that instruction. Read More