Student Well-Being

A Shore Thing

By Patrick J. McCloskey — September 29, 2006 2 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

How a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter became a mentor-blogger.

In summer 2003, Will Richardson was vacationing with his family on Assateague Island in Maryland when his wife, Wendy, struck up a conversation with another beach-goer, Kathryn Higham. Richardson joined the discussion and discovered that her husband, Scott, was a journalist. The high school teacher told Kathryn that he was always on the lookout for mentors for his journalism students. So Kathryn led Richardson up the beach, to meet Scott, mentioning along the way that he’d won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting a year earlier.

“I almost stopped dead in my tracks,” Richardson recalls.

The two men fell into an intense 40-minute conversation about newswriting, after which Richardson left with Higham’s contact information.

See Also

Return to the main story,

The Blogvangelist

Six months later, Richardson began teaching yet another journalism class at Hunterdon Central Regional High School in Flemington, New Jersey. He asked his 18 students to track down professionals whom, with his guidance, they’d like to recruit as mentors. He then announced that the student who wrote the best essay about why he or she wanted to be coached by a Pulitzer Prize winner would, in fact, earn that privilege.

“When I met Richardson, he talked passionately about what he did,” Higham, a Washington Post reporter, says of the meeting on the beach. “Then he mentioned blogs, and I had no idea that teachers were using them.”

Higham, it turns out, had agreed to participate in the mentoring program, but forgot about it until Richardson e-mailed him in January, letting him know an 11th grader was ready for his tutelage. Soon afterward, “I had this young woman named Meredith in my life, asking me a thousand questions,” Higham chortles.

He was able to respond to Meredith Fear’s queries from his office, home, or via laptop whenever he traveled. As Meredith worked on a piece about teen apathy, she also crafted a query letter, hoping to submit the story to a major news outlet. “Sharpening the top will increase your chances,” Higham posted to her blog. “Most editors have little time to read unsolicited queries from outside writers, so try to grab them as quickly as possible.”

Higham never met Meredith or visited her school. “But I was impressed with how plucky she was and how curious about the world around her,” he recalls. “She asked many insightful questions, which is exactly what you need for journalism.”

At the end of the school year, however, Meredith blogged: “My big learning experience was that I don’t like journalism as much as I thought.” But, she added, “I liked actually talking to and interviewing ‘real’ people.”

Meredith, now a sophomore studying anthropology at New York University, says “it was huge that someone who had achieved so much communicated with me like a regular guy. It helped me learn that I could succeed, too, when facing difficulty.”

“For me,” Higham reflects, “the benefit was being able to plug into the mind of a very sharp teenager and connect on a professional level across generational lines. I witnessed the evolution of her thought processes and writing skills as she dealt with feedback. Blogs allow a teacher to literally take their kids out into the world from classrooms anywhere in America. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

Related Tags:

A version of this article appeared in the October 01, 2006 edition of Teacher Magazine

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Recruitment & Retention Webinar
Substitute Teacher Staffing Simplified: 5 Strategies for Success
Struggling to find quality substitute teachers? Join our webinar to learn key strategies to keep your classrooms covered and students learning.
Content provided by Kelly Education
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Artificial Intelligence Webinar
AI in Education: Empowering Educators to Tap into the Promise and Steer Clear of Peril
Explore the transformative potential of AI in education and learn how to harness its power to improve student outcomes.
Content provided by Panorama Education
English Learners Webinar Family and Community Engagement: Best Practices for English Learners
Strengthening the bond between schools and families is key to the success of English learners. Learn how to enhance family engagement and support student achievement.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Student Well-Being Student Journalists Want to Cover Politics. Not Everyone Agrees They Should
Student journalists are grappling with controversial topics—a lesson in democracy that's becoming increasingly at risk for pushback.
7 min read
Illustration of a paper airplane made from a newspaper.
DigitalVision Vectors
Student Well-Being Opinion 3 Things You Need to Know About Absenteeism
We studied the data from more than 1.5 million students. Here’s are some overlooked insights to boost attendance.
Todd Rogers, Emily Bailard & Mikia Manley
4 min read
Scattered school desks seen from above, some with red x's on them signifying absences.
Vanessa Solis/Education Week and iStock/Getty Images
Student Well-Being SEL Has Become Politicized. Schools Are Embracing It Anyway
Eighty-three percent of principals report that their schools use an SEL curriculum or program.
5 min read
Image of positive movement when attending to a student's well-being is a component.
Dmitrii_Guzhanin/iStock/Getty and Laura Baker/Education Week
Student Well-Being Students Don't Want to Talk About Politics, Either
The election is occurring at a time when many schools are discouraged from having tough conversations in class.
6 min read
Viewers gather to watch a debate between Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at the Angry Elephant Bar and Grill, Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024, in San Antonio.
Viewers gather to watch a debate between Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at the Angry Elephant Bar and Grill, Sept. 10, 2024, in San Antonio. Researchers say students are more reluctant to talk politics this election cycle.
Eric Gay/AP