How can teachers use journalism and reverse mentorship to transform student learning? Today on the show I am joined by Dr. Ed Madison to explore this question and so much more. 

If you ever wanted a reason to start a podcast, this might be it: for the past several months, I’ve been reading and writing about journalism in schools and I’ve been coming across several articles by this scholar out in Oregon, Ed Madison. I’ve talked about his work back on episode 65: The Social Practices of Journalistic Writing. But here’s the thing…those people writing those articles and books and doing those cool things in education, they are just real people. So I was over the moon when Dr. Madison agreed to come on the show to talk about his research and work with The Journalistic Learning Initiative. 

Let me tell you a little about Dr. Ed Madison. Dr. Madison is an Associate professor in the school of journalism and communication at the university of Oregon and one of the founders of The Journalistic Learning Initiative. JLI empowers students to discover their voice, improve academic outcomes, and engage in self-directed learning through project-based storytelling. 

Ed got his start in the media world covering initial stories from the Watergate scandal when he was a high school intern for a local breakfast television program and at 22 was a founding producer on CNN and went on to work on many many projects from game shows to talk shows and seemingly everything in between. 

In this interview we talk about what reverse mentorship is and what it can do for teacher and student learning, we get into some of the challenges and opportunities with teaching young people responsible communication on social media, and the ever changing landscape of student press.

If you work with young people, if you care about media literacy, if you are curious about non-traditional models for teacher learning this is an important episode to listen to. I’m so excited to share this conversation with you. Click on the Soundcloud link to listen to our full conversation.

Things Mentioned in This Episode:

• Journalistic Learning Initiative 
• JLI’s Effective Communicators 
• Esther Wojcicki
• Stanford History Education Group’s Report (the “bleak” quote I referenced)
• Student Press Law Center (USA)

Saunders, J. M., Ash, G. E., Salazar, I., with student authors, Pruitt, R., Wallach, D., Breed, E., Saldana, S., & Szachacz, A. (2017). “We’re Already Somebody”: High School Students Practicing Critical Media Literacy IRL (in Real Life). Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 60(5), 515–526. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.617