Before I went to work at Soka University as a writing tutor in the Writing Center, I taught a Journalism 101 community college class for two years, 2007-2009. This class was later designated as a Mass Communication course, giving me the opportunity to expand on my lesson plans to include film. I designed a course curricula that focused on a different form of media each week. I was teaching Twitter before anyone ever heard of it, in fact, my students laughed hysterically when I first told them about it in the Fall, 2007. Oh, my, how times are exponentially escalating!
At the same time, I was working as a part-time news editor for a national publication centered in Santa Monica, CA, and, as such, accepted submissions from volunteer correspondents all over the U.S. I worked on helping bureau chiefs in the major metropolitan areas edit these stories for publication. I had the opportunity to meet wonderful people and help them get published in a national organ newspaper.
I worked at The Seattle Times for 20 years, and, during that time, helped establish the nationally award winning NIE (Newspapers in Education) department in 1995, and in 1999, became the Program and Curriculum Manager for the program. I negotiated with the educational divisions of the Seattle Symphony, Seattle Pacific Science Center, the Museum of History and Industry, the Seattle Theater Group and many other local and national entities to establish curricula and programs. I wrote in-paper curricula and curriculum guides to support the program. I set up an advisory board of local educators and administrators for the program. I marketed to the 18,000 teachers in our delivery area for both The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer. In 2001, we won an NAA (Newspaper Association of America) award as the most innovative program in the U.S.
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