The Other Class

When I was an undergraduate, I always assumed I be doing the typical things of an English teacher; assigning and grading essays, reading classic novels, teaching a little Shakespeare.  I thought about how I could make English a subject that ALL my students not only wanted to come to, but one that they wanted to come to learn.  Ever the idealist, I foresaw classes where the students were diagramming sentences just for the fun of it. 

For my first several years, that was, in fact, what happened. I got a job at a middle school and I felt I was creating a positive learning environment (minus the love of sentence diagramming - I still haven't solved that one.) 

When I received an offer to teach 9th grade English in the same town where I lived, I couldn't be happier.  I was setting up my classroom when my new principal, Steve, walked in the door. After the formalities of making sure I was getting everything I needed to begin the school year, he hit me with the question that forever changed my direction in education: 

"How do you feel about teaching broadcast journalism?"

I was a little taken back. This never came up in my multiple interviews. I had taken a journalism class in college, but broadcast journalism? New job. New principal. I was planning on being here for the remainder of my career. I wasn't sure how to answer.  Steve recognized my hesitance and quickly interjected that I would have plenty of support.  I would be co-teaching with a technology teacher who would be able to take care of all the tech issues. It was a class he felt would really be a good fit for me. His reassurance worked and I accepted the challenge.  

In the six years now that I've been teaching the class, I've come to identify as a broadcast journalism teacher. The one class I started with has sprouted to include a variety of associated classes. It has almost become a department on its own. I've learned things that I never would have experienced as an English teacher and in the end, it was the best decision I ever made for my career.