A New School of Thought on Back-To-Class Coverage
My inbox is filling up with back-to-school pitches, for everything from the latest vocabulary-building phone app to a microwave bag that will allow college students to cook ears of corn and whole potatoes. (The latter sounds like a potential starchy straight line to the Freshman 15.)
Every new school year has a familiar cycle to it, with the latest classroom technologymaking a debut (iPads, everyone?), school board members pledging that whatever went wrong last year has since been fixed, and educators gearing up for a host of new accountability measures. For education reporters, particularly those who are veterans of the beat, it can be tough to find new terrain on such well-trod turf.
Education blogger Alexander Russo had some fun with this challenge earlier in the week, pulling together a list of the common tropes of education coverage at this time of year, including “There are new teachers in the classroom, excited and nervous about being new teachers!” Also on the list were features predictably tied to current events news hooks – more campus security in the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy and how schools are handling the arrival of the Common Core State Standards
Every new school year has a familiar cycle to it, with the latest classroom technologymaking a debut (iPads, everyone?), school board members pledging that whatever went wrong last year has since been fixed, and educators gearing up for a host of new accountability measures. For education reporters, particularly those who are veterans of the beat, it can be tough to find new terrain on such well-trod turf.
Education blogger Alexander Russo had some fun with this challenge earlier in the week, pulling together a list of the common tropes of education coverage at this time of year, including “There are new teachers in the classroom, excited and nervous about being new teachers!” Also on the list were features predictably tied to current events news hooks – more campus security in the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy and how schools are handling the arrival of the Common Core State Standards