When we were asked to list our journalism experience at Summer Welcome at Mizzou before my freshman year, I was immediately intimidated by the lists from my future classmates. They'd been editors of student newspapers with dozens on their staff, attended journalism magnet schools, attended national high school journalism conferences. It was a semi-ridiculous display of teenage ego, with everyone around the circle trying to outdo the person who came before. I omitted any information about the size of our school newspaper and leaned on my experience with my column and attending state and national conferences, resulting in one of the girls I had been terrified later telling me that I had terrified her. We all laughed about it by the time we were sophomores. But, it stuck in my head as an example of what kids from Odessa are competing against.
So, when I graduated, I set out to help my former high school journalism advisor, Kris Poisal, improve The Growler. Luckily, Poisal is the best sport in the world, and bought into the goal even though it has meant changing how she's taught the class for years.
Because Odessa is a rural school, The Growler's resources are much more limited than the large schools my peers had graduated from. We're lucky it's still going, as some local schools have stopped offering journalism classes among budget cuts and falling student interest. A language arts oriented elective can get lost in the shuffle when credit requirements cut certain paths, especially since so many pack their lower years now to make room for large numbers of dual credit college classes as seniors. But journalism education is important, not only for the few kids who will pursue journalism as a career, but to build skills for all students in writing functionally, seeking credible information and general media literacy.
Again, because Odessa is a small school, Poisal is foremost an English teacher. A sainted English teacher, by the way, because she primarily works with freshmen. She didn't come to the school with any prior journalism training, but Granny took her under her wing, and even years later when I started coming up with ideas, she was ready to listen.
It took a few years to really start seeing the difference, but the 2018 Growler is almost unrecognizable from the 2008 Growler.
In addition to changes we've put into the process, part of that change comes from the students in the school. This year students organized a day of reflection on gun violence and suicide and violence, heavy and timely topics. As one of the organizers told me in her summa cum laude interview, she saw it as a chance for students to talk about elephants in the room.
The superintendent's office called to see if I wanted to cover the day, but my gut told me it would be better to come from the students, and that the Growler kids were ready. We had an issue all but put together, but I called Poisal, and we stuck a few kids on the story. It turned out to be my favorite story the Growler has ever done.
My next big goal is to get students to read The Growler. Their classmates are doing a great job covering the high school and other district buildings, but the only way forward is if we start building up a readership among students in the district in addition to those who read it when it's printed in The Odessan. Building up that cycle of relevancy won't come overnight, but I think we'll get there.
Kinly Grubb, the Growler editor for the past two years, had to learn how to lay out a jump for the Mission Possible story. It broke our norms in a lot of great ways.
For the past two years, Kinly Grubb has been the Growler editor. When she was a sophomore and a member of the Growler staff, we were still struggling to get kids to buy into the vision for a better Growler, but Kinly (who, because I wasn't quite confident in my ability to tell her from her sisters Kylin and Kloee, I was calling "Middle Grubb") immediately bought in. She comes from the most athletic family in town, and when listening to my pep talk about how every program Odessa kids put effort into succeeds, she kept nodding, focused. It turned out that she was a great writer, too, so when the time came I decided I wanted her as editor even though we usually didn't take athletes because of their schedules.
She's put a lot of work in these past two years, coming in during school and even late at night. Kinly likes journalism, and has added it as a minor, but her main goal is still to work for the FBI. It takes a special kind of kid to go headfirst into the two career paths most maligned by the President of the United States.
I've had a lot of fun teaching Kinly, so I decided to send her out with one last lesson. As those who attended Granny's funeral heard, someone (me) had taken to being pretty rough on the editorial students from the Missouri School of Journalism. Well, the professor in charge of that program retired last year, and sadly it looks like the program retired with him (I could, and probably will, write another post solely about the importance of teaching editorial writing). I must have missed the program a lot, because I decided to make Kinly write the graduation editorial for The Odessan. I put her through several drafts to make sure she was saying what she wanted to say and not what she felt expected to say, and to make it something meaningful to her class. I'm really proud of what she came up with.
Based on her reaction when she opened the paper today, I think she is, too.
An editor reading her first editorial.