By Elita St. Clair
This story is a part of the Cincinnati’s Storytelling of Journalism project, which represents a collaboration between Northern Kentucky University (NKU) journalism students, the NKU Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Greater Cincinnati Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Students interviewed professional journalist winners and finalists from the Greater Cincinnati SPJ Chapter’s 2023 Excellence in Journalism Awards to create these Nieman Storyboard Annotations-inspired Q&As and story annotations that analyze and celebrate our region’s award-winning works of journalism.
2023 Excellence in Journalism Award: Education Reporting
Winning Journalist: Madeline Mitchell & Amanda Rossmann, The Cincinnati Enquirer
Winning Story: We spent a year with first-graders. Here's how school has changed after the pandemic
She didn’t know what the story was going to be about. She didn’t know how long it would take her or what the finished story would look like, but Madeline Mitchell, educational reporter for the Cincinnati Enquirer, was determined to follow her curiosity. “I had a question,” Mitchell said. “The question was: How has Covid impacted these kids?”
A yearlong journey of observing, reporting and writing followed. Mitchell, along with photographer Amanda Rossman, produced an intriguing story showcasing not only the answer to Mitchell’s question regarding Covid’s impact of post-pandemic education but provided a window to view the educational world of a first-grade classroom.
The story, titled “We spent a year with first-graders. Here's how school has changed after the pandemic,” offers a long-form story full of nuance and context. The story follows a first-grade classroom at Sharpsburg Primary School in Norwood throughout the year, observing the six-year-old students and their teacher, Karen Eads, as they learned to navigate in-person learning for the first time since Covid-19.
Mitchell wanted a new perspective on Covid’s effect on students' learning and she found her viewpoint within this story. As the academic beat reporter for the Cincinnati Enquirer since 2021, Mitchell had spent the year before writing stories telling people what the experts were saying about Covid’s effects on learning environments and now she wanted the opportunity to show what was happening currently in educational classrooms post-pandemic.
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| Madeline Mitchell |
Mitchell utilized vivid details and showcased treasured moments from the year-long observation period. “It didn't feel like I was just debunking myths about education,” Mitchell said. “I was just there to show people what's really going on.”
NKU students Elita St. Clair, Andrea Turner and Bennett Shannon interviewed Mitchell about her approach to this story, her experience reporting and advice on capturing details for longform content.
Why did you choose to write this particular story?
This was a really cool opportunity for me to get to know one classroom, in one school, and shine this light on individuals. While a lot of what I do is big trend pieces where I survey all 65 public school districts and get a bird’s eye view, I loved being able to narrow this scope and show people what is happening to these kids. At the same time, I think in doing that, you are showing a trend and you are explaining this wider phenomenon. So we’re talking about, ‘How are kids, in general, impacted by the pandemic?’ There are so many ways to do that and I had been doing it on this larger scale for over a year. I think it was really beneficial for me, but also for our readers, too, to get that smaller scope and really narrow in on this set of students.
As you captured these different moments and details with the kids, was there anything in particular you were looking for?
I don’t think so because, again, I didn’t really go into it thinking I wanted to get X,Y and Z moments. As a reporter, sometimes you see something and you're like, ‘that's my lede,’ or, ‘that’s the hook that I’m wanting.’ There were definitely moments like that throughout the year. I think there are two moments that come to mind.
One of them was, I think, Elizabeth, the redhead, when she went up to another student on the playground and said the full sentence, ‘do you want to be my friend today? Let's play together.’ It was so perfect because we had just been in the class the week prior where the teacher was teaching them how to make friends, and then there she was and she said it in a full sentence like, ‘I’m going to make a friend right now.’ It was just such a perfect moment, and I was like, ‘there it is. That's a quote that I want to use.’
The other one was around Christmas time when one of the students didn't have money for the Penguin Patch and he was so upset, and just watching that moment between him and his teacher, when he was beside himself crying and was so embarrassed that he didn't have money with him. Then she gave him like two dollars or something to buy something with. That was another moment that Amanda the photographer and I looked at each other and we were like, ‘this is what it means to be a teacher.’ It’s not always about academics; it's not always about reading and writing. Sometimes it's just making sure the kid is happy and healthy and feels included.
How did writing the story and observing the kids make you feel as a journalist?
This is my favorite story that I have ever done just because it made you feel good; every time I was in that classroom, it was just fun. I mean I do a lot of reporting on the culture wars and political stuff that's going on in schools. I get really tired of that sometimes and I think it's important to show what's really happening in a classroom. There's all the speculation and all the talk about sex and diversity and racism and stuff like that, so talking about what's really happening and how kids are really being impacted felt good, and also it’s just fun. If you've never been in a room with six-year-olds as an adult, I highly recommend it. The first time that we went, the kids had just done some sort of group project or something or had been talked to about how to make any guest that comes to the classroom feel good. So before we left on that first day, in a chorus of these first graders, they all looked up at Amanda and I and said, ‘you are loved, you are important,’ and I got emotional. I didn't even know that I needed to hear that today, but this was perfect so it just felt really good and felt important. It didn't feel like I was just debunking myths about education. I was just there to show people what's really going on.
What advice would you give to someone doing a long-form type story to capture engaging details and stories within an environment?
I think it's really instinct. I think that you know in the moment when something is really compelling. I always take notes about everything, write everything down. The other way you can do it is a voice memo and this isn't just for this story, but for any story, even if you are doing a story that is from a council meeting or from an event. Call up your significant other, a friend, your mom and what do you tell them in two minutes? You just had a three-hour long meeting and now you’re like, ‘oh my gosh this is the thing that happened that was so crazy.’ Whatever stands out to you and that you would summarize in a two-minute phone call or journaling for five minutes after you go. I think that that is the most important thing that you can take away.
We spent a year with first-graders. Here's how school has changed after the pandemic
By Madeline Mitchell, Cincinnati Enquirer
The words “my name is” followed by a blank space tops the assignment centered on 20 first-graders' desks in Karen Eads’ Norwood classroom.
It’s the third day of school, and for some students, their third day ever being at school, in person. The desks are separated by clear plastic barriers, and Eads and her students all wear masks.
It’s a valuable skill, learning to write one’s name. It’s something you will do thousands of times in life.
But all that seems far away to Kindall Boyle, a 6-year-old with long, blond hair and bright eyes. She’s shy despite her lively wardrobe of big bows, sequins and sparkles.
Kindall writes her first name in pencil. Her mom taught her how to do that, she says. Her mom taught her how to write all the letters of the alphabet.
Toward the back of the room, Osmar Rodriguez uses a broken half of a gray crayon to write his name slowly and carefully, using all capital letters. The Apple Watch on his wrist makes his tiny hand look even tinier. His mom helped teach him how to write his name, too, he says. Then he stops.
“My favorite color is red,” he explains, finding a new red crayon in his bag before he continues with the worksheet.
One of the chattier students, Nayr Houston, sits up front. She has multicolored beads in her hair. A single “N” is written in the blank where her first name should be, but she is already drawing faces in the white space below.
The first face she drew was a mistake, she says, so she starts over in the lower left-hand corner of the page. She erases a smile and draws an upside-down curve in its place, to show what “bored” looks like. That’s the emotion Eads is teaching about today.
Question: What prompted your choice to use the illustration of name tags to start this story? Did you know that was significant when it happened?
Answer: I think name tags on an assignment instantly bring us back to elementary school. It’s one of the first things we learn how to do as students. I remember teachers telling us as kids that we’d get points off for forgetting to write our name on top of an assignment. So I thought that was a good opener for the story, to take people back to that feeling of being in school. And I did find it significant on that day, when I noticed some kids knew how to write their name while others didn’t. That was the first clue we had that kids in Ms. Eads’ class were coming to her from all different skill levels.
“Follow me with your eyes wherever I go,” Eads tells the class through her microphone, which helps students hear her despite her mask. She crouches down low, walks to the front of the class and zigzags around the room trying to establish listening and focusing skills.
Short exercises like this give students practice in following directions, she says. And many of the kids in her class, who have never been to in-person school before, need all the practice they can get.
Start of the School Year
Question: What directed your use of a timeline throughout this story’s organization? Did you know you would use that structure from the beginning or were there other structures you considered?
Answer: We didn’t know how we’d structure the story when we started reporting. That said, it became clear early on that going in chronological order would make the most sense, especially since the goal was to illustrate student progress over the course of the school year.
This is Eads’ 33rd year teaching elementary students. It’s her first time back to in-person learning since the pandemic. She taught virtually for the 2020-21 school year.
Eads says she’s already noticed signs of learning loss in the first three days of school. There are students who don’t know how to use scissors or glue. Some kids have never really been around other children before, she says, and don't know how to say what they mean. Her top priorities to start the year are teaching her first graders how to take turns, respect each other and build a safe community.
“They’re adapting so well,” she says. “Children are so resilient.”
She hopes she’s resilient, too, after the nightmare of virtual learning when parents yelled at her over Zoom and she watched from her basement office as her students struggled. She longed to hug them and cried when she had to settle for front porch waves. She couldn’t be the teacher she wanted to be last year, the teacher she is. The kind of teacher with three decades of experience, who knows that before delving into reading, math or science kids first need to feel safe, loved and valued.
Some of the kids in her room this year don’t feel those things yet. But they will. The student living in a shelter, the one who takes beach vacations, a kid who hasn’t spoken yet, a child terrified of adults, the boy with the Apple Watch. They all need something different from Eads, and she’s ready to give them everything she has. Because this is her calling.
It’s a new year with new kids. A fresh start.
Second Week
One week later, stuffed bunnies, dragons, bears, birds and other creatures are on display near Eads’ classroom door.
Spirit Owens, sitting just a couple feet from the toys, is having trouble containing her excitement. It takes all her focus not to get up and run for the purple monkey. Other kids in the class harbor the same energy, but Eads expects everyone to wait their turn.
This is one of her favorite traditions, Eads says. She started it years ago when she realized not every student has a parent to read with at night. No one should have to read alone, she says, so each child in her room gets a stuffed “reading buddy” to take home.
“I did this because I love you,” Eads tells her class.
She means it. Eads has spent hundreds, if not thousands, of her own money on classroom supplies over the years. She goes to football, soccer and baseball games when she can, and visits students at their homes sometimes. Norwood is a “pretty tight knit community,” she says, and Eads is proud to be part of it.
“I grew up here. I was one of them,” Eads says later, adding that she was a “transient kid” who grew up in a broken home. “I'm a success story, and I think that's why I want them to be success stories.”
From his desk, Daniel Herrmann cranes his neck to see the reading buddy options and all the books there are to choose from. Eads says it’s OK if they can’t read the words. They can always read the pictures.
“This,” says Daniel, “is the best day ever."
Sharing a story is a sacred experience for Eads. She’s mastered character voices and her class library is made up of books she read to her own two kids, both of whom are grownups now. Those beloved books are old and worn from use, but brand new to these students.
Over the years she’s diversified her collection. She wants her students to see themselves in the stories, whether they be Black, white, Latino or Asian. It helps kids become better readers and more invested in learning, she says. She feels lucky that the critical race culture war has yet to find its way to Norwood City Schools.
But with education as the battleground for political debate and school threats discussed daily on the news, her guard is up. She removed a book where a character holds a pride flag from her library because she “didn’t want to tackle that this year.”
Question: This is an interesting observation. Did you decide to ask further questions as to why this is?
Answer: Yes, we talked about this further with Ms. Eads but kept the nitty-gritty out of the story because that’s not really what the piece is about. I think it made sense to acknowledge broader trends and fears in education, but again, we wanted to focus on student growth. And since the culture wars didn’t infiltrate Norwood schools much during our reporting, it didn’t make sense to draw out this section any further.
“I get very emotionally upset about it,” Eads says. She told her husband, also a teacher, “if we finish our careers without a shooting in our districts, I’m going to be grateful.”
Late September
Eads’ students eat lunch with the other first grade class, spaced out on long, red and gray tables in a small multi-purpose room.
It’s late September and still feels like summer outside. Once they’ve finished eating, most students mask up without thinking about it, getting ready for recess.
Raegan Stacey, a redhead wearing jean shorts and a red T-shirt, approaches a girl with a blue unicorn dress that reads: “born magical.”
“Hey Elizabeth, want to hang out together?” Raegan asks.
“Yes!” Elizabeth Stiles yells, jumping up and down. The two hold hands and sprint across the pavement towards the swing set.
It might seem sweet, charming even. But to Eads, the gesture signifies great progress. At the beginning of the year, she says, there were several students who did not know how to make a friend.
“And so we’ve taught them and they’re working on that,” Eads says.
On the blacktop outside, Kindall sits with a group playing duck, duck, goose. She’s moving slower than the other kids in the circle, clutching a white paper marked with purple crayon. It reads: “I like you” in Kindall's first-grade handwriting. She says she made it for her mom.
“When she gets home from work,” Kindall says, “I’m gonna give it to her."
Second Quarter
After the first round of assessments, the results are in: Eads’ students are low in math and reading skills. Eads says she isn’t surprised, after the last year and a half of learning disruptions.
The children who are below level are “significantly below,” she says, farther behind than students Eads has had in the past. Some of these kids don’t know numbers or how to count. They don’t know letters and the sounds each letter makes.
The constitution of Karen Eads' class hangs on display as a reminder to the students.
“They usually know those kinds of things when they get here.”
By mid-October she estimates 40% of her kids still need significant interventions.
Eads and her colleagues use the testing data to group kids together by their needs. She also taps the intervention team of reading and math specialists, so pairs of students are pulled out of class at times to work on more targeted learning goals.
The kids can tell the wide range of skill levels in the room, too, Eads says. She watches struggling students seek out certain friends who they know could help them. Many mornings, Aubrey Nolan can be found in the back of the classroom helping another student with math.
While their academics are behind, Eads says this year some of her students are better at working with computers than she is. They’re also better at taking nonverbal cues and doing their homework. But most don’t know how to tie their shoelaces, line up at the door, or raise their hands to ask or answer questions.
Eads’ job is to give these kids the tools they need to learn. Sometimes that means teaching them how to use physical tools, like pencils and highlighters. Other times it’s correcting them when they mix up letters “b” and “d” or when they write a backwards “5.” That’s the easy part.
The hard part is listening to the problems she can’t fix. The broken oven in a student’s home, who says mice are living in her house. The kid who told her his neighbor was shot in the head in the middle of the night. The shooters took the man’s car and now he’s in critical condition at the hospital.
Question: These examples really drive home the challenges the students face. How did you gather this information and choose which specific examples to use?
Answer: Throughout the school year kids would share with us alarming stories about their lives at home, and of course they shared things with Ms. Eads. I wrote everything down, whether a kid told me themself or through the teacher. In a school where every kid is economically disadvantaged, these stories weren’t hard to collect. I chose the shooting because I could verify it easily through police records. And the broken oven because it illustrates a challenge plenty of students face: hunger. Kids can’t learn if they’re basic needs aren’t met.
At school, Eads makes sure her kids are fed and tells them that they matter. She teaches them how to read. She shows them how to count to 120. She knows from experience that education can lift them out of whatever troubles they face now and into a better life.
Every so often Eads reminds her students to “lean in,” with their bellies touching the table, to show they are ready to learn, as opposed to leaning back or slouching passively.
“If you look, listen and learn, what happens to your brain?” Eads asks the class.
Raegan smiles. She knows this one.
“It grows."
December
On a cold December day Eads' kids cross the street to the other Sharpsburg Elementary building, home to second through fifth graders, for a STEM lesson. Marshall Dykes teaches this special unit, with his trusty sidekick Beyonce the python.
STEM is Spirit’s and Elizabeth’s favorite class. They are partners for today’s assignment, which is to build a rocket ship out of magnetic tiles.
Elizabeth asks Spirit to hold up the rocket ship skeleton while she adds more tiles to their project. Spirit names their rocket ship “Blast Off.”
Dykes walks around the class with Beyonce resting across his neck and shoulders. He calls up students a couple at a time to pet the snake and hold her if they’d like. He explains how Beyonce’s scales are like fingernails, how she can smell with her tongue and see heat with her eyes. Pythons used to have legs, Dykes says, since snakes were once lizards.
With half of the school year nearly finished, the class knows their numbers and letters, and most are beginning to read complete sentences.
Most importantly to Eads, they are comfortable with her and with each other. They’ve formed friendships and use their imagination every day. They’re curious always and kind most of the time.
Kindness is a big learning goal for Eads’ class. She wants to teach them how to learn, yes, but also how to be good citizens and to look out for others. Eads feels the importance of being kind and giving grace now more than ever. Her parents-in-law are both in the hospital.
Between caring for them and caring for her students, Eads rarely has a moment for herself. Any small act of kindness goes a long way in her eyes.
Around Christmastime
Question: The use of the seasonal time stamps as subheadings really shows the extended reporting period on this project. How were you able to time manage this story being a year long project?
Answer: We dropped in to Ms. Eads’ classroom, on average, about twice a month. So really, it wasn’t that big of a lift until it came time to pull the piece together in May. I was easily able to work on other projects and cover my beat effectively during the school year. What really helped in the end was taking a few minutes after each visit to journal about the day, so that when it came time to write through the piece, most sections were already fully written.
Also important to note, we had thought about this being a four-month project instead and only following the class through the first semester. But we were getting such great stuff and ultimately decided to keep it going. I think reporting to the end of the school year helped us to tell a fuller, better story in the end.
Sharpsburg Elementary has a beloved December tradition for students: the Penguin Patch, a pop-up shop of knickknacks, jewelry, toys, mugs and stickers. Students get a preview of the merchandise a week before the store comes to school, and Eads suggests each student bring $5 to $10 the day of shopping. It’s mostly junk, she says, but the kids get excited to buy presents for others.
Aubrey is the first to get to school that morning, wearing a shirt that reads: “Your voice has power.” Eads compliments it.
“That means you are strong,” Eads tells Aubrey. “You can change the world.”
Eads says she had Aubrey’s older brother and her mother as first graders. She had Daniel’s father in class, too, and Nayr’s brother.
The kids check their mailboxes and get breakfast. Everyone at Sharpsburg receives free breakfast, though some students tell Eads they already ate and don’t take anything. Spirit dances around while she eats, still unable to stay seated.
When it’s time for the Penguin Patch, Eads has her students line up in two lines: one for boys and one for girls.
In Eads' boy line, one student is crying.
He walks up to the front of the line and holds Eads’ hand, wiping his eyes and looking down.
“Is this because you don’t have money?” Eads asks, bending down.
The boy nods and sniffles.
“I will allow you to pick one thing and I will buy it,” she says, and hugs him.
Inside the shop there are long tables full of trinkets to choose from: mugs that say “Super Dad,” “Best Mom Ever” pens, aprons, notebooks covered in sequins, necklaces, rings, keychains and games. The students go up a few at a time, with a chaperone, to look around and choose their gifts. They have no concept of money or how much they can spend, so their teachers try to direct them towards bins in their price range.
Eads spends $2.50 at the shop. It covers two gifts the little boy picks out for his brother and his sister. His tears have dried.
The daily challenges many Norwood students face are incomprehensible to those in neighboring districts and the Cincinnati suburbs. Every student in the district is economically disadvantaged, according to state data. There are no school buses in Norwood. Every student either walks to school or gets dropped off in the car line. The schools didn’t send families supply lists at the beginning of the year, instead stocking classrooms with enough pencils, folders, crayons and highlighters for all.
Principal Joe Westendorf says Sharpsburg teachers could teach anywhere, but not all teachers could teach at Sharpsburg.
Halfway Through the Year
Back in Eads’ room, the veteran teacher instructs her students to set up their folders to make private desks. It’s time for a spelling test.
Eads reads off the words and uses each in a sentence: let, as, be, saw, but, into, help, what, its, they, when and now. She tells the children to hold up their pencils when they’re done with each word so she knows when to move on. They study 12 words every two weeks, she says.
Eads encourages her students to tap and sound out words that are more difficult. She reminds them to make sure their letters are the right size and shape.
When one student gets anxious about the spelling test, Eads tells her to use “a body scan” to calm down, and to just try her best.
Question: Throughout the story, you use Eads’ actions to show her teaching style and character. You must have seen so many scenes over a year of following the class. What advice do you have for creating scenes like this to show the person’s character?
Answer: Little moments that seem routine to someone like Ms. Eads are sometimes the best way to show their character. It’s the age-old “show, don’t tell” directive most journalists get at one point or another. Instead of writing “Ms. Eads knows her students really well and comes up with good exercises to keep them engaged.” Show the reader! That’s what I did here, just describing what I saw in her classroom. Noting small details and how others respond to those actions, too – in this case, Eads’ students – helps the reader understand that person’s character.
The rest of the day consists of number identification and sentence building exercises. Eads’ students count by twos, fives and tens and backwards by ones. Every now and then she reminds her students to pull up their masks.
Because the school is still following strict COVID-19 safety protocols, these lessons are a bit different than what Eads would usually do. In a typical year, she’d have everyone sit together on the rug up at the front of her classroom. They’d do more activities together on the whiteboard.
Eads pauses for “brain breaks” between tests and lessons. Sometimes it’s 30 seconds to make animal noises, other times it’s a one-minute nap. Anything to keep them engaged and focused.
One of their last lessons of the day is a word math problem, about how many pet turtles there are total if one kid has 7 and another has 6. She reads the problem in her “Gruffalo” voice, at the kids’ request. It’s low and scratchy, which makes her students giggle.
Eads is part entertainer, part therapist, part instructor and part friend to these kids. She has to be. While first graders have a lot of material to get through each school day, they are 6 and 7-year-olds, after all. And there is no work without play.
February
In February, Eads’ mother-in-law dies. She says she’s not sure what lies ahead for her family.
A substitute teacher fills in with her class and speech therapist Allison Flanigan provides a lesson on emotional regulation.
Question: Instead of focusing the story solely on Eads, you decided to include other characters: the substitute teacher and the speech therapist. What was your thought process on how to include different characters?
Answer: I’d argue the story isn’t about Ms. Eads, but about her students’ growth. And while she was a big influence on their growth, of course, she wasn’t working alone. The substitute teacher and speech therapist and other paraprofessionals had an impact on the kids’ progress throughout the year, so they were necessary to include in the story. Any educator will tell you it takes a village to help students along their academic journeys, and that’s why I included those other characters.
Flanigan tells Eads’ students that she spilled coffee all over herself earlier in the day. In that moment, she had two options, she says: get upset and throw everything on the ground or take a deep breath and continue with her day. The kids tell her the better option is to continue with her day.
Flanigan and the children go through different scenarios to determine what constitutes a “big deal” or a “little deal” and how to respond to each.
Big deals often require asking for help, like when someone is hurt or bleeding. On the playground a few weeks ago, Alice Sears fell and skinned her knee. Blood seeped through her green leggings and Aubrey got the attention of an adult on duty.
Little deals usually require taking a deep breath and moving on, like not getting the color crayon you wanted. When Dominic Workman was frustrated at STEM class because some students weren’t sharing their magnetic tiles, he breathed it out and kept working on his own project.
Why should students trust adults at school to help with “big deals,” Flanigan asks?
Elizabeth, who is wearing a sparkly pink tutu, raises her hand to answer.
“Because we care and love you guys and we want to help you,” she says, mimicking the adults she knows.
The rest of the afternoon is free time for students to catch up on work. Without Eads there to enforce structure and stability, some of the students are particularly antsy. Kindall keeps falling out of her chair. Crosby Connolly takes a break and goes for a short walk in the hallway.
The sub, used to working with high schoolers, isn’t sure what to do.
Structure and routine were the main ingredients missing from virtual school. Eads couldn’t control her students’ environments last year, when family members would wander into frames or kids would log off without explanation. She thought structure would make a comeback this year when she returned to in-person learning.
But sometimes, life has other plans.
Spring’s Nearly Here
The first thing Nayr says when she walks into Kathy Burton’s art class is: “You have on Claude Monet’s shirt.” She pronounces the “T” in “Monet.”
It’s true, Burton is dressed in theme for the day because the students will make their own version of Monet’s famous water lilies.
Their masterpiece will include ducks, specifically Ruby the duck, from the Jonathan Emmett children’s books they’ve read in Eads’ class. Each student will create their own Ruby by cutting out the different duck body parts and gluing them together, then drawing on Ruby’s eyes with a black marker.
A large piece of blue construction paper is laid out on a table at the front of Burton’s classroom. Aubrey says she made the brown nest in the middle and Elizabeth made the cattails. Everyone’s Ruby creation will get taped onto the paper pond once they’re finished.
Kindall is wearing new pink glasses. She says she just got them yesterday, and that her mother thinks they will make her better at drawing.
Across the room, Aubrey furrows her eyebrows in concentration while cutting out the pieces for her Ruby.
At another table, there’s a squabble over who gets to sit where.
Art was optional when the students were online, Burton says. She is very happy to be back in-person, and now in April without masks or plastic shields between each student. There’s more movement now and they can get more done, she says.
The timid, unsure children who stepped into Eads’ classroom in August are long gone by now. These students are confident, silly and eager to learn.
They’ve grown socially, too, and can be found exchanging what passes for first-grader gossip.
Some students still struggle to regulate their emotions and stay in control of their bodies. But everyone can add and subtract by April and write complete sentences with capital letters to start and punctuation to end.
“But it's only because we started filling them up emotionally first,” Eads says.
A Perfect May Day
Full of jitters, Eads’ students walk out the front door of Sharpsburg Elementary in two side-by-side lines. Some students hold hands.
They are about to walk about half a mile to the Norwood LaRosa’s off Montgomery Road, where they will make individual pizzas and talk about producers, consumers, goods and services, rounding out their two-week economics unit.
It’s their first field trip, ever, Eads says. She gets teary just thinking about it, placing her hand to her heart. She says the field trip cost each student just $2. It’s a perfect May day to make the journey: 67 degrees with the sun just poking through the clouds.
Once they are seated at the restaurant, co-owner Jim Von Hoene steps out of the kitchen and welcomes Eads’ students to his store. He’s been hosting field trips for almost 30 years.
He explains that they can come back to the kitchen five at a time, with a chaperone, to get a tour and make their pizzas.
Osmar, Nayr, Kindall, Raegan and Everlee Lomboy go first. The students line up to wash their hands then peek inside the walk-in freezer and cooler.
Von Hoene explains what is stored in each and what temperature certain ingredients need to be kept at. Then they line up along a metal counter near the pizza oven, which Von Hoene says will bake their pizzas at 500 degrees for five minutes.
Each student starts with dough and sauce, which some students have trouble spreading.
Everlee puts pepperoni on her pizza, and Nayr puts pineapple on hers, saying “please” and “thank you” all the time, as they were instructed by Eads.
Question: I love the use of multiple anecdotes, like this one, throughout the story to keep the reader interested. What advice would you give in maintaining the reader's attention through a long format story like this one?
Answer: Moments you as a reporter find interesting, noteworthy or heartwarming are likely moments that will stand out to readers, too. A big part of writing longform is picking your favorite memories from the reporting process. There were certainly moments that didn’t make the cut (that’s what editors are for!) but my advice would be to lead with the parts of the story that made you feel something in the moment, or parts of your reporting that stuck in your head weeks after the fact. Those are the anecdotes you can use throughout the piece to keep people caring.
Back out in the dining room, kids who aren’t making pizza are working through activities on their paper placemats. Phoenix Curran and Fabian Dominguez practice their tic-tac-toe skills. When one student is asked by her friend to borrow a crayon, she hesitates.
“Almost-second graders would be happy to share,” Eads says, prompting the girl to hand over the crayon.
Crosby and Evan Heppard hold hands on the walk back to Sharpsburg. The boys discuss summer playdate plans and promise to ask their parents to set something up.
“Me and you can play my instruments,” Crosby says.
One Week Left
It’s the second-to-last week of school and Eads’ students are watching a video on worker bees. Each student is sitting still, facing forward, engaged.
The kids are sitting closer together now at smaller tables without plastic barriers, and only two students in class are wearing masks and that is by choice. Norwood dropped its mask policy weeks ago.
“This is more me,” Eads says. She calls her students up to the front rug to all sit together for story time.
The class reads two books about bees, one fiction and one nonfiction, and then Eads gets up and draws two clumsy, overlapping circles, more like ovals, on the easel. She thanks the class for not making fun of her Venn diagram.
“That’s a good circle!” Kiyah Lewis says. Dominic says he needs to practice his own circles.
“Sometimes I make sloppy circles, too,” Nayr says, comforting Eads.
The kids compare the stories with partners first, then Eads calls on students to complete the Venn diagram. She decides two students are too distracting and sends them back to their seats and takes a hairtie one student is fiddling with and sets it in the girl’s mailbox.
When they’re finished, Eads has the children shout together: “Hey second grade teachers, we are rocking it!”
With one week left before Eads’ kids are second graders, they can count to 120 by twos, fives, tens, forwards and backwards. They know the days of the week, the months of the year and are starting to tell time.
That afternoon, the kids sing and dance along to a math exercise. Eads has stayed strong all day, but now she falters.
The day before, a shooter entered an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and killed 19 students and two teachers. Another 17 were wounded in the Robb Elementary School shooting.
Just listening to her own small, innocent charges “makes me want to cry.”
“They just sound so sweet,” Eads says.
Nineteen children died. She has 19 in her class. The numbers stop her cold. The reality of her responsibility is too much to bear.
But Eads breathes through her feelings and walks back to the center of the classroom to join in with the cold spaghetti dance, her favorite move. Her students welcome her back with enthusiasm, unaware of the terrifying scene playing out in Eads’ mind.
Last Day
On the last day of school Eads says she still has some academics she wants to get through. The students should do their math dance one more time, finish a project on animal habitats and read one more story. Everyone’s here.
The nonreaders from the beginning of the school year can read now, Eads says. Her students like being at school and having conversations with one another. Some of them still can’t tie their shoelaces, but everyone knows that capital letters go at the beginning of people’s names and the importance of being kind to each other.
Most of the students say their favorite subject is math, and they like learning how to add, subtract and multiply. But Kiyah says she loves reading. Her favorite book doesn’t even have pictures, she says. Just words.
Some students didn’t hit every learning benchmark, Eads says, but that wasn’t her goal for those students. Each student has different needs. Some needed to learn that they are loved, she says, or learn that school is a safe place, or learn how to find their voice and advocate for themselves. One student was nonverbal at the beginning of the year. Last week, he led the class in a math word problem.
Question: Journalists don’t typically have the opportunity to follow sources for an extended period of time. What was it like being able to personally witness the changes in the students from the beginning of the school year to the end? How was this important to the story's chronology?
Answer: I loved working on this project for exactly this reason. Looking at the data from Eads class, which showed moderate student progress, wouldn’t have told this story – not really. So much of education reporting is looking at numbers and progress charts. But actually seeing the kids grow, and noticing changes that we can’t track with numbers – like their ability to make friends, managing their emotions and learning to actually like school – made this a much better and more engaging project. We couldn’t have done this by bouncing to different classes each month, either. It had to be the same kids in order to paint the picture of progress.
“They're where they should be at this point,” she says.
At their last recess, Aubrey, Nayr and Alice play a variation of tag together. Phoenix, Raegan, Crosby and Sebastian Garcia Zetina pile up on the slide together and giggle as they inch downwards. Fabian starts playing soccer by himself, but then Elizabeth, Daniel and Anthony Mercado Escobar join in. Fabian is good at soccer. He shows off his best moves.
When they line up to go back inside, Dominic straightens in alert.
“We only have, like, two hours left with Mrs. Eads,” he says.
“I love you, Mrs. Eads,” Raegan says.
Elizabeth asks if she and Mrs. Eads can have a sleepover sometime.
On their way out, Eads insists on a hug from each of her students. She says goodbye to their families and calls out last minute affirmations, pieces of advice.
“You matter always,” she says. “You belong forever.”
“Be careful crossing the street!”
“You are in my heart and loved always.”
“When you’re in the sun, wear sunscreen!”
Question: I love the interactions in this scene. What makes this significant to the story? What are your tips for using dialogue in a story like this?
Answer: This was such an emotional day for Eads and her students. I could feel it in the room, so I knew it was important. The dialogue here, I think, also shows the light chaos of the last day of school. Parents are in and out picking up their little ones, while Eads tries to get her last words in. Those words are important because they are the last ones her students will hear from her until they see her in the halls next school year. Those are the words that will stick with most of them over the summer. In a story like this that is chronological, someone’s last words are almost always significant.
This is what Eads was born to do. She is a teacher. She can’t control which lesson, moment, life hack, story or trait her students will remember from this school year. But she hopes that something, a feeling, will stay with them. The knowledge that learning can be fun, that they are safe while in the care of their teachers and the instinct to spread love over hate.
She hopes they visit her classroom next year, when she’s back to square one with a new batch of squirmy kids awaiting her guidance. This city, this school, this classroom, these kids make up her life’s work. After 33 years, she says she knows she can give more. So she will. Because that’s what teachers do.
Before Nayr leaves, her older brother Jaron, who had Eads in class as a first grader, stops by. He just finished fourth grade. When he was in Eads class, she says, she gave him a Sonic stuffed toy because that was his favorite character.
Jaron hands Eads a Sonic sticker and gives her a hug before running home, Nayr trailing behind.
Sticker in hand, Eads goes back inside to lock up her now empty classroom and heads home.
Question: How did you settle on the ending of this story? What made this seem like a good conclusion to the story?
Answer: We always wanted to keep the reporting confined to what happens at school. That’s why you don’t get the parent perspective in this story. The boundary was always the school building. So ending with Eads about to walk out of the building, out of her empty classroom, seemed like just the perfect ending in keeping that boundary.
