Remembering why journalism class is important

We’ve been having a blast celebrating during National Yearbook Week and watching social media to see how various yearbook staffs have been celebrating.

National Yearbook Week is another good occasion to stop and realize how important scholastic journalism is. Leland Mallett, the award-winning adviser at Walsworth Yearbooks school Legacy High School in Mansfield, Texas, recently wrote an outstanding article on this topic, which you can see at the Texas Association of Journalism Educators (TAJE) website.

As Mallett points out, high school journalism students “perform better on standardized tests, make higher GPAs and earn higher grades their first semester of college than their classmates.”

Mallett also specifically singled out the importance of yearbook as the only history document of the school, a lesson he learned when a former Legacy baseball pitcher, Noah Syndergaard, pitched in the World Series. National publications like the New York Times came calling for high school photos of Syndergaard and knew where to find them – the yearbook.

Be sure to check out Mallett’s entire article. It’s a great reminder of what we’ve been celebrating this week.