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Young Readerslunchboxes towards the cafeteria.Part of what teaching journalism toyoung students taught me is to recognizethat there are a multitude of skillscoming into play and that people willget stuck at predictable places. At theelementary level, particularly, a teachercan assume nothing. Most studentsforget to bring their notebooks, paperand questions to their first scheduledinterviews. They have trouble introducingthemselves and what they aredoing. They can’t talk and write at thesame time. Their note-taking skills areslow and painful—as they try at first totake down every word. They are afraidto ask if they don’t understand something.Phone messages will often leavethem tongue-tied.And that’s all before they start writing.What we found at North Beach isthat it’s important for them to hit thewall and equally important for an adultto expect this and be prepared to propthem up and move them forward. That’swhen the learning takes place.Take the following example: Threefifth graders were conducting a phoneinterview with a children’s theater artisticdirector by speaker phone for theChronicle. The call was monitored by ajournalism intern from the local university,but still, one girl looked up atme in the middle of the interview andmouthed frantically “she’s talking toofast” and quit writing.At the end of the interview, the internsat them down. “What do youremember about what she said?” sheasked the girls. As the ideas came out,the girls could write them down withoutthe pressure of having to ask theinterview subject to wait. They got theirstory and even some accurately spokendirect quotes.Showing vs. Telling: AnAdaptable Writing MantraWhen fourth grader Kyle W. brought amovie review he’d written for me toreview, it started predictably like mostbook or movie reports throughout history:“‘Monsters, Inc.’ is a great moviewith something fun for everyone.”“Hey Kyle,” I asked. “Why did youlike the movie?”He thought about it for a second.“Because usually it’s kids who are afraidof monsters,” he said. “But in ‘MonstersInc.,’ the monsters are afraid of ababy.”“That’s your lead, Kyle,” I explained.“You tell us why you like it, not that youlike it.”Showing your story’s importance vs.telling it is a mantra in most newsrooms.It’s also a powerful writing toolin the classroom. Asking students tooffer details to buttress their observationsand opinions does two things: Itforces them to evaluate whether thoseopinions and statements are true, butit also offers them the chance to findtheir voice as a writer because the detailsthey might chose are differentthan someone else’s, but equally valid.Before each newspaper comes out,teachers walk their students silentlyaround the school. At the end of thetrip, they list what they’ve noticed that’sinteresting or different. Often, thoseobservations can be turned into newsstories. It encourages kids not only tonotice what is around them, but also tofind out what is happening and why it’shappening. “It’s kind of like a detectivemystery,” one teacher told me, the firsttime we let 150 kids loose on the schoolto start their reporting.These writing skills don’t need to beconfined to newspaper articles. Theyapply to virtually every school writingassignment and can boost a student’swriting abilities. Once in a third gradeclassroom, I was scheduled to teach ajournalism lesson just after the studentshad returned from a field trip toa local park. “We wrote little storiesabout our field trip, would you like tohear them?” the teacher asked me.“Not yet,” I said. “First, kids, tell methe most interesting things you learnedon the field trip.”I wrote their observations on theboard: We learned about nurse trees,and different kinds of snakes, and thatsome frogs look like they are dead, butthey aren’t; they are just catching flies.Other ideas flew out, with some excellentdetailed descriptions.“Now read me the stories,” I asked.Did any of these details make it intothe stories? Predictably, not one. Nearlyeveryone started the same, with a chronologicalsummation of the event: “Wegot on the school bus and went to thepark.”That assignment would have producedmore diverse and interestingresults if the teacher had first led studentsthrough the exercise of identifyingexciting details, then instructedthem to write about the most excitingthing they saw on the field trip. Thatwould bring out both individual studentvoice and offer more structure tostories that would otherwise neverbreak out of the chronologically toldstory mold.Journalism and WritingNiki Hayes’s gamble ultimately paidoff: The WASL scores have climbeddramatically, from 36 percent of fourthgraders passing the WASL the year beforewe started the program to 58 percentthe next year, to 72 percent thenext year, and to 79 percent last year.We’ve also found that the differentjobs of the newspaper can engage studentswho otherwise wouldn’t want towrite: An Attention Deficit HyperactivityDisorder student turned out to be abrilliant photographer; a highly functioningAsberger’s syndrome childhelped seal envelopes and file contracts,and our first-year advertisingteam of fifth graders hit the pavementnearly every day after school, earningan average of $500-$800 per issue. Atyear four, advertisers contact NorthBeach in the fall, eager to get into thenewspaper.More importantly, though, I’ve hadsome great reporters and writers.There’s Andrew F., a gifted fifth graderand avid skateboarder, who becamethe school’s skateboard correspondent.His first story, on skateboard tricks, fellapart, but his next three stories worked:a news story about new skateboardingrules; a story on skateboard fashion,and a review of Seattle’s skateboardingparks. “He didn’t like writing last year,but he can’t stop this year,” his motherconfided to me. That’s probably becausehe’s writing about what he likesto do, rather than some random as-Nieman Reports / Winter 2003 41