2008 Woodie Awards
Area teachers laud training in workshop
A national survey shows journalism students score better and earn higher grades than other students.
By Kendra Taylor, Wagner High School
Issue date: 6/30/08 Section: News
Originally published: 6/29/08 at 10:35 AM CSTLast update: 9/4/08 at 2:07 PM CST
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Just ask Mary Goldberg, a journalism teacher at Taft High School for the past seven years who will teach at Brandeis High School when it opens in the fall in Northside Independent School District.
"I always encourage my students to apply for the workshop so they can get the instruction and experience of a lifetime," Goldberg said.
"Journalistic writing is straight to the point and indeed helps your writing in and out of the classroom."
She has had about 15 students who have attended this workshop, including Lauren Barrera, a 2007 participant serving in the 2008 workshop as a counselor-in-training and production assistant.
Barrera, 19, said she came to the workshop last year with basic writing skills and quickly learned she knew "absolutely nothing about real journalism."
She improved her writing, interviewing and communication skills, and she learned how to work on deadline.
"Journalism is the only thing I ever wanted to do," Barrera said, noting that a $1,500 scholarship from Dow Jones Newspaper Fund Inc. is helping pay her tuition to study journalism at San Antonio College.
"I benefited from the workshop tremendously," she said. "It changed my life. I hope the impact the workshop had on me will have the same effect on other workshoppers."
Students compete for three $1,500 scholarships from the Alamo Community College District, three $1,500 awards from the W.B. Daugherty Scholarship Fund and a $2,000 scholarship in honor of Regina Montague, a 1997 workshop participant who died in a car accident in 2004.
Another teacher, Michelle Elizondo, who has taught journalism at Clark High School for eight years, attended the Urban Journalism Workshop in 1994.
"It was a great experience, and I learned basic skills that helped me become a better writer," she said. "The workshop gave me a head start in college and showed me what was expected from me as a journalist."
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