After the pandemic, giving students real-world learning experiences has become more difficult, important
By R.J. Morgan
As K-12 education drifts further down the lane of tying funding and accreditation to rigid quantitative outcomes, students are missing out on many of the exploratory opportunities that helped make America the dominant, freethinking force it was for most of the 20th Century.
A recent study by a team of my colleagues at other institutions bears this out. Led by North Carolina Scholastic Media Association director Monica Hill, researchers interviewed 29 high school journalism advisers from across the country about their post-pandemic experiences in taking students on field trips to state-level journalism conventions. The results are illuminating.
First, the value of these events is unquestionably high. Previous research has demonstrated that school field trips of almost any kind help reinforce the learning taking place in the classroom, and that the skills and memories forged through experiential learning (travel) stick with students long into adulthood. In fact, some of the most memorable experiences from my own high school days were field trips with the school choir. We traveled far and wide for invited or competitive singing events, and those experiences played a major role in forging and clarifying the values I carry with me to this day.
Second, most of the barriers to students accessing these types of events existed before the pandemic. Now, they’re just worse.
Scholastic journalism programs, like other elective pathways, tend to skew toward schools with richer, whiter student populations. Those schools can better afford the teacher units, equipment and travel funds necessary to maintain a top-flight student media outlet. Some advisers in the study even reported more funding for student travel coming out of the pandemic, as parents and students alike have tried to regain some sense of normalcy.
But in other schools, the situation is dire. There is little or no funding for travel or equipment, quality teachers retiring early or being diverted into other state-tested core subjects, and some programs being shuttered altogether. It’s students at these schools who need the boost of experiential learning opportunities more than ever, and they’re being systemically cut out of the loop.
Even advisers in affluent districts report greater difficulty in securing bus transportation to and from events, navigating the double-speak bureaucracy of permission forms and liability waivers, and, sometimes, in generating interest from students themselves. In the ecosystem of the American high school, anything that’s been done three years in a row is, “the way we’ve always done it.” Well, conversely, the pandemic interrupted normal field trip patterns to the point that some students are saying, “We’ve never done this before, why start?”
In Mississippi, we’ve seen a lot of these issues firsthand. The Mississippi Scholastic Press Association is one of the stronger state scholastic press associations in the country, and we host two statewide student journalism conventions each school year. Pre-pandemic, we averaged 500 students or more per event. Post-pandemic, those numbers have hovered around 400 students per event. Our association draws a significant portion of its operating budget from these events, so a decline in attendance creates a strain on other services. These are dangerous trends for what is meant to be a foundational training lab for our democracy. So what can be done? Monica’s team offers three actionable takeaways for state-level scholastic press directors like myself:
Focusing in-person events on socialization - the main value-add for in-person events is the opportunity for collaboration, networking, problem-solving, etc.
Grounding in-person learning in pre/post-event activities - conventions should be the tent pegs of an ongoing communication strategy, not one-off celebrations.
Producing asynchronous training modules for those unable to attend - field trips can’t be the only way we fulfill our mission of educating students.
Thanks to regular input from a strong Board of Advisers, Mississippi has already been proactive in addressing all three of these findings, especially the interactive nature of our in-person events.
Students (and teachers) spend so much of their time on an island, serving a school community that has little understanding of what they do or why it’s important, that we have always used our conventions as a time for like-minded individuals to congregate and let the collective “hivemind" guide best practices.
We invite professionals to share their expertise, sure, but a lot of our sessions are taught by students and teachers from other schools who’ve developed something that works for them and want to share it with the rest of the state. When we do use professionals, they’re mostly leading students in a hands-on reporting activity or guiding them through some new coverage technique or organizational model (constructive journalism, solutions circles, etc.).
We purchase memberships for all Mississippi advisers in the national Journalism Education Association, giving them access to hundreds of hours of lesson plans, training modules, and a professional learning community who understands the difficulties and challenges of advising school publications.
But none of this can replicate the satisfaction of having a professional praise your work in a room full of your peers. Or the tactile joy of jumping up and down with your best friends, holding a plaque that says, ‘WINNER - Best Yearbook’. Or the frenetic brainstorming that happens on the bus ride home after a full day of being exposed to new ideas.
More and more of our daily lives are being carried out in the digital sphere. Let’s not let our kids lose out on the real-world moments that will shape their future.
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R.J. Morgan is instructional associate professor in the School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi, director of the Mississippi Scholastic Press Association and a member of the Overby Center panel of experts.