1st Amendment

Day 1 at the Institute was full of fantastic information about the 1st Amendment and interviewing skills. In such a short time, I've already learned a great deal that I can take back to my journalism students. I'm planning ways to adapt today's group reporting activity to demonstrate the importance of interviewing and filtering the good information from the bad. Actually, as it becomes more and more difficult for me to stress the importance of face-to-face interviews to my students, pretty much all of today's interviewing exercises will become wonderful classroom tools.

But one of the things that really stuck with me today is one of the simplest and most obvious concepts we covered, and that is the idea that we know so little about the 1st Amendment because we don't teach it. I was a bit embarrassed to realize how little I know about the 1st Amendment and the history of this country in our first session this morning. I didn't know it because I wasn't taught much about it, I don't teach it because I don't know much about it, and my students aren't learning about it because I'm not teaching it. The cycle of ignorance is being continued. Thanks to today's presentation, I learned so many interesting pieces of trivia that I never knew before about the 1st Amendment and the way that the freedoms it guarantees have played out over the last couple hundred years (forget the fact that Frank Sinatra had a huge FBI file - that much seems obvious, but I never knew that "Louie Louie" had a file at all!). From court cases to the Pledge to the arts and entertainment industry, there doesn't seem to be anything left untouched by this all-important Amendment, especially for journalists.

Also thanks to today's presentation, I've got a great starting point for teaching the 1st Amendment to my students. I now know that teaching history can be extremely engaging and fun while also imparting so much vital information. I'm planning ways to adapt what we saw today so my students, especially those who are planning future careers in journalism, can learn about the historical foresight that guarantees a job will still exist for them.

Bridget Freiler

Pottsville Area High School

Pottsville, Pa.