In the age of misinformation and increasing stress on families, it is more important than ever that children have safe spaces to sort facts from fiction and express their ideas. The School News Project is a community-run program in public primary schools that aims to nurture passions for writing and reporting in children. I had a chance to sit down with the founder of the project, Cat Rodie, a neurodiverse journalist with years of experience writing for publications such as The Sydney Morning Herald and Good Weekend. Amongst other things, we discussed teaching children to fact-check, special interests, and Pokémon.
Date: Saturday, May 25, 2024
Location- Carriageworks Media Room
You've had a rather extensive career in journalism. How did the experience in the industry lead you toward forming the school news project? Were there crucial stories that you covered, or other moments that led you to realise there is a need for this in the school system?
Not really. It was more because I really wanted to contribute to the school where my kids were. I started The School News Project four years ago, but it wasn't called that then. It was just called Press Gang. And it was just a club that I ran as a volunteer, and it was because my kids both went to the local primary school and I really wanted to do something. I feel very passionately about public education and the lack of funding for public education and I wanted to do more as a parent to support the school. But I didn't want to just rock up and plant a garden or do the kind of things that the school were asking for. I wanted to contribute in a way that felt meaningful for me, but was also using my skills. And so I thought I'd do a school newspaper. I imagined that it was going to be some really nerdy kids who wanted to be better writers, and it was at first, but then it grew and grew and I ended up with this massive group of about 30 kids giving up their lunch time to come and write and it included loads of ADHD kids, loads of dyslexic kids, loads of autistic kids. I found that quite interesting. What is it about this that makes these kids want to give up their running around time to sit and do writing? There were a couple of kids in particular where teachers said to me, how did you get these kids to write this whole paragraph? And it was just because they were writing about something they cared about. It wasn't rocket science. When you give kids space to write about things that they care about, or that they're interested in, they're going to be a lot more receptive to doing work.
So that's kind of how it started. And I did that for several years while my kids were at school. And then when my kids went to high school, I really wanted to carry on doing it, but I didn't feel like I could carry on doing it as a volunteer. And I said to the principal that coming to do this is the highlight of my week. It's so much better than sitting at home on my own, writing and pitching and I'd really love it if it was my full time job. He looked at me like I was mad. He said schools would love to have this! And I didn't know how I could make that happen. About six months prior to that I had my ADHD diagnosed. I started taking medication and that's the difference between me going “I've had this idea,” and “I've had this idea, and now I'm going to actually make it happen.” Because it wasn't so overwhelming with the medication.
The second part of that was about, with that particular story, did I ever see the need for it? I don't think it was anything that I'd particularly written. But the need for it is seeing children engage with misinformation on social media.
We have questions about that coming up.
Yeah, that was a large key interest of mine as well when I read about the process. But it started off as a way to contribute to the community.
What kind of research was done in the early stages of forming the project? Was it kind of a play it by ear thing?
When I first was doing it as a volunteer it was very kind of like, fly by the seat of my pants! I wanted it to be their newspaper and my role was to help them. So they'd say, I really want to write about Pokémon and I would help them create a story about Pokémon that kind of fitted into an article so it wouldn't just be them info-dumping about Pokémon. It would be, how can we put this into a format that's going to be easy for people to read and engage with? I've got one kid currently in Press Gang who only writes about Pokémon, so every term when we do a new newspaper, we have to find a different way, so that it's not always the same article.
Last term it was ten facts about Pokémon. This term it's a Q&A about Pokémon. I said to her, instead of it being the facts about the actual Pokémon, could you tell me a bit more about how Pokémon became so popular? It's amazing.
That child should meet my boyfriend. They can talk about Pokémon for hours.
I've learned quite a lot more about Pokémon, like, through knowing her. She's a really cool kid.
Children and their special interests, they are the experts on the subject matter. There is nothing they don't know.
So true.
Have you ever spoken to an autistic child, like a young one, about dinosaurs or something like that?
My oldest kid has only recently been diagnosed. Their special interest when they were a kid was dogs. If you walked down the street and there was a particular breed, they'd be able to say that is that breed. And these are all the facts about that breed.
It's amazing. I had special interests as well when I was a child, but I hardly remember how I acquired so much information about them. It's such an unconscious process.
Isn't it amazing though? So much goes into that kind of special interest and it's the process of llearning, but it's all kid-driven rather than in a classroom situation where it’s like “Now we're going to learn about this, now we're going to learn about this.”
It doesn't work for so many kids.
But that skill of saying, I'm going to learn about this, and the research, and the writing, and the sorting, and the organising. My child used make presentations about dogs, just for fun.
So, currently The School News Project is working with only government primary schools?
Yes.
I suspected that was an accessibility thing, in terms of targeting where the resources might be lacking. I think that you've just about confirmed that. What were the other factors influencing your decision to only go to public primary school?
I think that maybe in the future it will expand, but I am personally very passionate about public education. That's where my heart is. At the moment, The School News Project is quite small because it's just me. I do have some people working for me now, but it really is essentially a one-woman show. And I think that in the future, I do have a vision that it will be bigger and more schools will be able to access it.
So I wouldn't ever say that it's only for public schools. I would like it to be accessible by all kids, but in terms of where I'm putting my effort at the moment, I want to support public education.
I totally agree. Part of the journalistic process that you teach to children is fact checking. Adults don't know how to fact check. How are you going about teaching it to children?
It's so scary. I think it’s that they have to fact check what they write. So every term, they put
together one issue of their school newspaper. The process is week 7 is deadline week, so they have to have their first draft ready by week 7.And then in week 8, I come and I've got the proofs, So I've done a layout and I've put it all in, and they have to check it. So they have to do the edit, and they have to do the fact check. And I make them do fact checking like “you've quoted this teacher. You need to go and find that teacher and confirm that this is what they've said.” And I think it’s that they're fact checking their own work. So that's how they begin to learn about how important it is.
It's such a good way to break it down. I think that's the most elementary level that it needs to be at for them to be able to consume media and figure out what the truth is: to have them produce media.
That's exactly it. So I think that in terms of the media literacy element, I feel like it's kind of
learning on the job and I'm not really teaching it. They're having this experience and they're
learning through their experience. One of the things with fact checking is that they have to have a trusted source. We have lots of conversations about “what does a trusted source look like?” and it does sometimes frighten me what they think passes as a trusted source. Then then we'll talk about it. Some kids will say Google - okay, but Google's not a source, Google is a search engine. And I think there's a lot of adults that don't even know about the fact that you can pay Google to put your entry higher up.
Yeah, It's about 10 years ago that I would have learned that in school - basically you can't
trust everything you see on the internet. I don't really think it's taught to children that
explicitly anymore.
I don't think so. So much copy and pasting goes on, so I don't let them use laptops for the first few weeks unless they need to do voice-to-text, because I don't want them to just Google things and tell me what they find on Google, I want them to do the thinking themselves. And they also do a lot of research where they interview experts via Zoom.
I've thought about it a lot recently, which I think is what really drew me to interviewing you. How do we fix the misinformation problem from the ground up?
It's really difficult and it does frighten me a lot. I think that kids need to do fact checking in the classroom, not just as a part of something like The School News Project where they might be doing it if they're lucky, or their school might not be doing anything about it. I think there are some new things in the curriculum now about media literacy, but I think that there needs to be a bigger approach. One of my press gangs interviewed the MP for Bennelong, Jerome Laxale, and they asked him about misinformation. They asked what the government can do, and he was talking about new legislation, not for prosecution but a more stringent policy around it, so if there’s misinformation it can be removed more easily.
It's the wild west right now in terms of that kind of legislation and we can’t trust Meta at all, we can’t trust the company that runs TikTok.
It does frighten me how many kids believe everything that they see on TikTok. My own kids
really enjoy TikTok, and have really learned that they have to fact check. When Matthew Perry passed away, my child came to me and said “Matthew Perry died.” And I said “where did you see that?” And then they immediately said, “I've checked the source. It's been published in the LA Times. Is that trusted enough for you?” And it was quite a proud moment.
I do have this one kid at the moment at one of my schools in Western Sydney who's having this ongoing debate with me. She's trying to persuade me that TikTok is better than books And I said to her that I'm open-minded, maybe you will convince me. But if you really want to write this as an investigation or a persuasive piece, you're going to need some really hard evidence.
Yeah, that’s an issue.
What I really want her to learn is how the TikTok algorithm works and the echo chamber and
how it feeds back to you what you already believe. I don't want to tell her that, I want her to go and learn it. And that's one of the things I think is really great when you get students becoming reporters because I'm not telling them what to think, I'm presenting them with that challenge of go find the information, go talk to some experts! I'm really hopeful that she will change her own mind.
I appreciate the gumption of it. I just think that there's the sausage principle, you know? If you love something, never find out how it's made. Knowing what goes into TikTok and how they create the algorithm, you just stop enjoying it eventually. You get mad every time you go on. Are you ever surprised by what children are interested in reporting on?
Yeah, constantly. But I love it. One thing that's been super, super cute is that the kids want to
write about their teachers and what their teachers do outside of school, the fact that their
teachers have these secret lives. And it's not really a secret, but for the kids themselves, it is like a secret life because teachers are a mystery to kids. I remember like, you bump into a teacher in the supermarket, it's like “Mr. Smith does grocery shopping!” and it's really shocking and surprising.
I remember.
They love learning about what their teachers do in their free time. There’s these kids that call it 'Teachers Uncovered'. It's really cute. They found out that one of their teachers plays the harp, and they interviewed her about that. And another teacher plays soccer on the weekend, he's the manager of his soccer team. They're so excited by it. But they're great stories for the newspaper, the school newspaper. Because, like, the school community wants to read that stuff too. It makes the teachers seem more normal and relatable.
It must be nice for the teachers to just kind of have the external parts of their lives acknowledged. That sounds like a really lovely experience for everyone.
Yeah, it's really cool. And some of the teachers, it turns out, have done really cool things.
Have there been any thoughts about expanding to high school students?
I do get regular inquiries from high schools. I find it a bit scary. I find it really easy to work with primary school kids. I think maybe because I'm quite a big kid. High school students, I find a bit scary. I've got two of them. Both of them are alright, but they are quite scary as a bunch. I don't know, maybe I wouldn't be the right person to deliver it.
But I recently had a coffee with another journalist who loves working with high school students. Maybe there is potential for him to develop that and work with other kids. I would really be super, super keen to work with high schools with support units. That would be the ideal place for it because of those principles of it being student-led, they can write about things that they're interested in.
In terms of accessibility for neurodiverse students, how has that been formed?
When I meet a new group of kids, I immediately tell them my name's Cat and I'm a journalist,
I'm dyslexic and I’ve got ADHD. I think that immediately means that any kid in the room who is dyslexic or has ADHD, immediately they relax. Sometimes I'll write a list on the board and I'll make spelling mistakes, because I do, I've got the most appalling spelling and there will always be some kid that points out, oh Cat, you've spelt that wrong and I just say, it's okay, it doesn't matter.
You all know what I mean by that. This is just a note so that we remember what we're doing. I think that that's kind of my way of showing through being authentic, that it's okay to make mistakes. And then in terms of them doing the work, I make sure kids have opportunities to tell stories however they want to tell them, and kids that struggle with writing, they can use voice to text.
Something that we've been doing a lot of and works really well is video. So, a kid that is not good at writing, you give them a microphone, and tell them to go and make a video report about whatever it is that they want to report on. And it's absolute gold. These kids just come alive in front of the camera. It's still storytelling, it's still being recorded, and it's still news, it's still ticking every single box. It's just that they've done it in a video form. They've still done the thinking, and they've still done the research, and they've still done the interview. I'm hoping to do more of that, because the results are so fantastic.
I remember in school I had one assessment modified for me, at this point they were trying to see what would engage me and they were like, well, you can do a video instead. It was strange because the other children just asked questions like “why can she do a video but I can’t?” But it’s better when you just make it an option for everyone.
Yeah, absolutely. That's what I've been really trying to do more of with the videos - at the
beginning when we're doing the planning, what's the best format for this story? Because
sometimes the best format would be a video. It would be more interesting as a video. But then there's also all those kids that do the cartoons, because I like them so much.
I cried laughing at a couple of them.
Some of those kids are so talented, and so funny, and the way their brains work, some of them are absolutely bonkers, but you know, like in the best way. But that's a legitimate storytelling technique, and that's what I'm always looking for.
Looking at the website, I can see that there’s a great interest in social justice. There are
some children who are extremely passionate about making the world a better place, I'd
like to hear more about that.
That's the thing with young people, they are passionate. There's a lot who are really passionate, particularly about climate change issues. The hard thing about growing up in that generation is knowing that it's terrifying, so they want to write about it. And they get pissed off when adults around them aren't taking it seriously. So there's been a lot of stories that try and encourage adults to take more action.
It's sad that we have to be told by children in primary school what we should be doing to preserve the world for them.
I know, but I do feel good about the fact that they have a platform through this to be able to do that.
It can be far too easy to feel paralyzed with fear for Gen Alpha, as they come of age in a confusing and sometimes, dangerous media landscape. The School News Project is a crucial initiative, allowing children to figure out how the media they consume is constructed while providing them avenues for free expression and space to pursue their interests. I would personally recommend anyone who’s said any variation of “this generation is doomed” to take a look at The School News Project website. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
