How to report from inside a school — without access to the school

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In her recent story, For students in a surge, a ‘new normal’ and plenty of worries, Boston Globe education reporter Jenna Russell provided abundant in-school details — and verified the facts — without any in-person access to the school.

By Jenna Russell, Boston Globe

It’s been deeply frustrating, the last two years, to be mostly blocked from first-hand reporting inside schools.

Some days, it feels like doing the job this way is impossible.

Thankfully, it has still been possible to build source relationships with students – maybe more than ever, now that Zoom and FaceTime and the rest play such a routine role in all our lives.

And that’s what’s kept me going.

Teenagers can be incredible sources of news, insight, gut checks on what’s really happening, and hidden realities. That’s why our Boston Globe Great Divide team created a “student advisory panel” at the start of the pandemic, a half dozen students from urban and suburban districts whom we Zoomed with regularly for wide-ranging discussions about their experiences in 2020 and beyond.

With our access to classrooms still limited, I have continued to stay alert for student takes on what’s happening in schools. And as the Omicron surge hit Massachusetts hard in January, and positive cases among students inched toward the 100,000 mark, I spotted some tweets late one night by high school senior Stacia Zoghbi that caught my attention at once.

Some days, it feels like doing the job this way is impossible.

PICKING THE RIGHT STUDENT SOURCE

Stacia’s eloquent Twitter thread was full of the kind of sharp, specific reporting that I craved from inside school buildings.

She described an environment rife with risk and anxiety, crowded cafeterias, inadequate masking, locked bathrooms, classmates overwhelmed by makeup work, and students coming to school with COVID symptoms out of fear of falling behind in their classes.

It struck me at once that Stacia might be someone who could open a window for our readers on the student experience and help me tell a much more student-centric story about the surge at a time when schools remained off-limits.

It was clear that she was a smart, mature, detail-oriented, and centered teenager who had already given a lot of thought to this subject. Her role as a student representative on the Worcester, Mass., school committee suggested that she had practice in reporting fairly and accurately on student experience: that is her main job as student rep, after all.

HOW IT CAME TOGETHER

I reached out to Stacia and pitched the idea of picking a day the following week when she would keep a detailed journal of her time in school, to serve as the basis for a Globe story. I felt immediately that she understood what I was asking, and was capable of handling it with integrity. We talked on the phone at length on Jan. 10 or 11 about the level of detail she should record and the need to make it absolutely true to the events of one day, and she agreed and appreciated the approach.

We picked Wednesday, Jan. 12. She texted me throughout the day and sent videos she had made at several points. After school, we got on Zoom and spent a couple of hours talking through every detail of what had happened, and she sent me her notes.     

CHECKING THE FACTS

As for vetting her account, I reached out to her principal by phone and e-mail, and did not get a response, so I reached out to the Worcester schools superintendent, Maureen Binienda, who was very responsive and talked me through some school-specific details and stats as well as her general take on how the month was going.

I also attended (virtually) the Worcester School Committee meeting on Jan. 20 where Stacia and other student reps presented a report and survey on student concerns, which covered many of the issues raised by her experience that day.

TRANSPARENCY AND RECONSTRUCTED EVENTS

Stacia was open with classmates and teachers about what she was doing as she did it, and she spoke with her principal about it ahead of time as well. I opted to omit from the story a couple of happenings that may have arisen from her unusual duty that day as a source for a story — primarily, a class discussion about COVID policies.

I felt very comfortable with her account and our reliance on it, which is consistent with many stories I have done both during the pandemic and before it, in which I rely heavily on trusted sources or subjects to recount events I did not witness firsthand, while fact-checking every detail that can be checked.

I've done a lot of reconstructive narrative in my career that depends on this type of reporting, and I've never run into any major problems. If anything, I think students can be more reliable narrators of imperfect scenarios than adults, who tend to want to make things look a bit cleaner and more together than they are.

I felt very comfortable with her account and our reliance on it, which is consistent with many stories I have done both during the pandemic and before it.

THE RESULTS

In the end, the story felt fresher than others I’d written because it was rooted in a new perspective and relied on expert high school eyes to pick up things I couldn’t witness from outside.

Though I’ve reported on schools throughout the pandemic – and have two children in public schools myself – this was the first time I’d heard of students knowingly coming to school while COVID-positive, or grasped the connection between staff shortages and locked bathrooms.

It was an important reminder that, no matter how long you report on something, there is likely something you’re still missing.

In the end, the story felt fresher than others I’d written, because it was rooted in a new perspective.

THE HIDDEN ADVANTAGES OF NOT BEING THERE     

I really wanted a "pure" take — capturing her regular everyday experience, rather than her experience being followed around by a reporter, which of course would have changed what happened in countless incalculable ways (if the school would have allowed me to do it).

All those telling little interactions she has along the way with friends and classmates probably wouldn't have happened if I'd been there listening in with my notebook in hand, or they would have been a little less authentic.

UNEXPECTED TWIST

I consulted with editors about whether to integrate material from other sources into the story, but the consensus was that it was most powerful to keep this one story squarely centered in the student perspective.

I'm sure there were plenty of readers who assumed we picked this particular school day after the fact because it was the day she was ID'd as a close contact. Remarkably, that was pure coincidence: just one of those unlikely, unexpected twists of circumstance that can happen while reporting, that instantly raises the stakes and urgency.

One of the striking things you notice when you cover education is how rarely students have real voice or influence in the decisions that shape their lives.

TAKEAWAYS

One of the striking things you notice when you cover education is how rarely students have real voice or influence in the decisions that shape their lives.

Even when it looks like they’re being consulted, their input is often discounted, despite their expertise in how schools really function.

There is real value for journalists in seeking students out and finding ways to listen to them.

Often – as happened when I reached out to Stacia – they are amazed that an adult would value their impressions.

Given how wise and observant and insightful they can be, that shouldn’t be the case.

Jenna Russell is is a member of the Boston Globe's "Great Divide" education team as well as the co-author of "Long Mile Home." As a member of the Spotlight investigative team, she helped expose failures of the state’s mental health care system, work that was recognized as a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2017. Read her stories or follow her Twitter.