Literacy Milestone: Wanting to be a Journalist
March 15, 2019
This won't come as a huge surprise, given her earlier newspaper creation project, but my daughter announced recently that she thinks that journalism might be a good future career for her. What made this stand out for me was that she had actually thought it through, based on the things that she likes to do and the things that she's good at. More and more, she's self-identifying as a person who likes to / needs to write.
I'm not sure exactly where the idea of journalism specifically came from, but I had recently gotten her a subscription to a monthly printed newspaper written for kids called Xyza News for Kids. [It's pretty cool - I do recommend it.] She also knows that I read two newspapers every day. She has in general been asking me about news events lately, both current (Momo) and historic (the Holocaust), as she hears about things.
As a result of her interest, I've started being more proactive in telling her about news stories I think she'll find relevant. For instance, I told her about the recent college admissions cheating scandal. Her question there was: "What's going to happen to the kids who are in college?". Which is an excellent question. Of course I am selective about what stories I tell her about.
But she has her own ideas about what she's ready to hear about, anyway. She got it into her head this week to research people who had escaped from prison and were still at large. I printed out an article that I found listing a bunch of escapees from New Jersey prisons. She made a little crime notebook about them. This notebook makes her feel like a journalist, and I guess that's the real point.
I can't say that I would want to see her decide to be some sort of international war zone correspondent in the future. But in the relatively near term, if she wants to get involved in school newspapers, I think that could be a good fit for her. I slipped a copy of The Landry News by Andrew Clements into her book basket this weekend, and have a couple of other journalism-themed titles on her wish list. And, of course, I keep feeding her notebook habit (which is not small task - you would not believe how many notebooks she has accumulated).
Reading and writing are so intertwined. I remain thrilled that my daughter is passionate about both of them, in whatever ways she chooses to express that. Thanks for reading!
© 2019 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved. You can also follow me @JensBookPage.