Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Photo-synthesis



Writing leads, taking pictures and putting it all together, today was a day of consumption and production. Watching all the institute participants snap photos, race for keyboards, and finalize photo edits was a rush. This is the synthesis of information that we can only hope our students go through.

I haven’t been on a deadline since college. Frankly, I never really did a very good job with deadlines. They felt bad or like I didn’t know what to do first, so I never did anything. But today felt amazing. I was able to use all the information from our sessions. Combined with the lessons of my past, I was able to turn out a confident piece of writing (I hope) as well as photography I feel good about. I also feel pretty darn good about the questions I posed to Leonard Downie Jr.

The past few days reminded me of my original intent; do journalism. Now that I teach it, and am involved in the process again, I feel as though I were never gone. Don’t get me wrong, I felt nauseous from the adrenalin pulsing through my head from 4-6 today. But in the end, I felt good and satisfied with my accomplishments so far.

I put it all together, in a way I feel was successful. Now I have the ammo to go home and tell my students, it is not that hard. It just takes effort, and if you are not willing to put forth the effort then, as Downie suggests, you shouldn’t be here.

Michelle Evenson
Eden Prairie High School
Minneapolis, Minn

Above photo: 2010 ASNE Reynolds Institute teachers Nate Thompson and Laura Schwinn synthesize the information taken from Arizona Republic staff photographer Rob Schumacher's Basics of Digital Photography session while reporting on speaker Leonard Downie Jr., vice president at large for The Washington Post

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