Be my guest

Today was a very busy day, not without a large portion of stress smothered and covered in panic and probable high blood pressure. Today, issue 1 of The Hoofbeat, volume 2 went off to the printer. Also, today was the day that the General Editor of the Dallas Morning News and the CEO of the AH Belo Corporation came to my classroom to talk to my newspaper kids. Holy cow. So much today.

There were, of course, two Digital Media classes and three Professional Communications classes in and out of my classroom, as well. Not that I didn't have enough on my mind...

Two things are worthy of mention. First- obviously- the guests. I am always unsettled at the prospect of sharing my classroom with others. It's my space, and those are my four walls. 

General Editor Bob Mong is the kind of guy who puts you immediately at ease, though. I greeted him at the door of the school, and he was kind, calm and interested in me, my kids and our newspaper. He is a genuinely good person. 

Jim Maroney, the CEO, arrived a little later, and I sent my own general editor and one of my staff writers down to greet him. He was also very kind and giving. 

The pair talked to my sixteen kids and kept their attention the whole time. They were interesting and compelling. Props to the kids, too- my students listened without once glancing at a text message, Snapchat or Instagram. Nobody even tweeted. They made me proud. They even had good questions to ask at the close of the talk. A+ for putting our best selves on display. 

The other thing worthy of note happened after the guests left. I had the draft pages of our paper printed out and ready for some good old-fashioned red pen treatment. Two of my kids were belaboring details that I didn't find all that significant. One was reworking a lead sentence over and over. I told her that the one we developed together was fine, and she insisted that it had to be perfect. While I was busy trying to tell her that you never get it perfect in a newspaper- there's always something that could have been better- she said it was important to her that her very first story have a good first sentence. My whole brain made the "aww, how sweet" sound. I immediately had to apologize for being old and jaded. She is what she's supposed to be. She's idealistic, and she wants to do a good job. We went on to spend a full ten minutes on the sentence. Time well spent. 

Roughly the same thing happened after school with a sophomore boy and a headline. He wanted it just right. He told me he was going to cut it out and keep it, so he wanted a great headine. Aww. (Again) 

As tense as my shoulders have been and as much as this part makes me crazy, it's the kind of teacher heroin that keeps so many of us coming back year after year. They want to do this. Who knew? 

Maybe some of them will go into journalism. Maybe some of them will just get a little better at writing and carry on with other life plans. Either way, between the need to get it right and the way they listened so intently to our guests today, it's a pretty good day to be a teacher.