So my daughter wanted some help with her homework, and I being the only one home was a willing volunteer.
She had to pick out a current event from the newspaper and write about it. She needed a story with the basics, who or what, where, when and how. The article she originally picked was about how one of the victims of the Colorado theater shooting felt about guns. I thought it would be a good article but she said it did not really have all the basics.
At that point we went online to look at some other articles. Now I have been a journalist for a period of my life, hard news mostly and some freelance sports writing so immediately I thought, "why not write about the people that were killed in a bar the other night." Mind you, my daughter is in the fifth grade and I was not thinking about it at the time.
"Dad," she said. "Do you really think that is appropriate for the fifth grade."
Hmm... a story about a robbery gone wrong, 5 murders in a seedy bar and the criminals trying to burn the bodies to cover up the original crime. Well it has all the basics, the who, the where, the when and the how... of course I could just see the face of the teacher as my daughter handed in her current event.
What the hell was I thinking...
I guess I got caught up in the hard news angle.
Well we decided it was much more appropriate to talk about a seasonal road closure in the Rocky Mountains. At 10 murder is not something that you should be talking about in school.
She had to pick out a current event from the newspaper and write about it. She needed a story with the basics, who or what, where, when and how. The article she originally picked was about how one of the victims of the Colorado theater shooting felt about guns. I thought it would be a good article but she said it did not really have all the basics.
At that point we went online to look at some other articles. Now I have been a journalist for a period of my life, hard news mostly and some freelance sports writing so immediately I thought, "why not write about the people that were killed in a bar the other night." Mind you, my daughter is in the fifth grade and I was not thinking about it at the time.
"Dad," she said. "Do you really think that is appropriate for the fifth grade."
Hmm... a story about a robbery gone wrong, 5 murders in a seedy bar and the criminals trying to burn the bodies to cover up the original crime. Well it has all the basics, the who, the where, the when and the how... of course I could just see the face of the teacher as my daughter handed in her current event.
What the hell was I thinking...
I guess I got caught up in the hard news angle.
Well we decided it was much more appropriate to talk about a seasonal road closure in the Rocky Mountains. At 10 murder is not something that you should be talking about in school.
You chose wisely but,...sounds like she would have done a good job with the murder story too. It is through their writing that we learn much about our children..
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