"Hometown" guidelines, for advisers

Who can participate?

Submissions are open to students attending all PBJ chapter schools.

Why is PBJ doing this?

Over the years, PBJ has built a diverse network of schools-- from big cities to rural areas, from Title I to wealthy schools, from small to big, and from coast to coast. Creating the opportunity for chapters to collaborate substantially moves our mission forward.

In future years, opportunities will also involve direct collaboration between chapter schools. This opportunity is more hands-off and submission oriented, but it will share with students the differences and diversity across American communities.

What is the assignment?

As formulated on the student guidelines page and in the below assignment document:

Have you ever wondered what parts of your community are particularly special? When you think of your home and its surroundings, what stands out? What makes your community strong and what makes it weak? And what role do you and your classmates play in the community?

In this assignment, you’ll have the opportunity to creatively express your perspective on your hometown or community. Your submission will be displayed alongside other submissions by students all across the country—and many of them will have very different responses to the idea of “Hometown”! You’ll be able to view them on an interactive website, with many forms of expression.

The theme of this assignment is "Hometown":

• What's unique about your community? What is its setting—geographic or urban/suburban/rural—and how has that setting contributed to its uniqueness?
• Are there specific elements to your community that make it shine—specific individuals, cultural elements, or particular diversity—or make it weak?
• In the recent context of your community, how has your community evolved in response to events, challenges, and changes?

You can submit anything you’d like. The only requirement is that your submission substantially relate to the theme and tell a compelling story.

You can submit anything, including but not limited to—

• Non-fiction written work (articles, profiles, personal essays, interviews, etc.)
• Creative written work (short stories, essays significantly relating to your hometown, poetry, etc.)
• Video and other motion media (documentary, artistic portrayal of your hometown, etc.)
• Photo essays or collages that tell a story
• Creative artwork (prints, paintings, etc)
• Audio work (podcast, spoken word, original music composition, etc.)

How do I assign this?

However you'd like. You can share the student guidelines page with your students online. We've also created a printable assignment (in .pdf or .docx) that you can modify as you see fit.

• Download the assignment as a PDF
• Download the assignment as a Word document

How do I integrate this assignment into my classroom?

Choose whether or not, and how, to offer credit

Most schools are offering this assignment for credit or for extra credit. Although you are free to structure this assignment as you please, here are some examples of what we've seen so far--

• Full credit. The assignment is required, will be graded independently by the educator, and may also be featured locally (i.e. on the chapter website). Every student participates.
• Full credit for some students. Journalism II students are required to submit, while Journalism I students can choose whether or not to submit for extra credit.
• English curriculum integration. English classes are also required to submit to the collaboration, or students receive extra credit if they do submit.
• Extra or remedial credit. Students receive extra credit if they choose to submit. Some students are required to submit. Assignments are superficially graded on completeness, or are graded fully.
• Purely optional. Students are aware of the opportunity but are not compelled or incentivized to participate.

Note that journalism advisers are also free to extend this opportunity to other non-journalism students attending the same school. For example, a journalism adviser also teaching English classes can choose to offer this opportunity to their English students, or to the school as a whole.

Choose whether to have local constraints

We want to make this a meaningful-- but unobstructive-- addition to your curriculum, so you are free-- and encouraged-- to place constraints on the content, type, length, and topic of your student submissions. These restrictions are called "local constraints" because they only apply to your students or to your school.

Here are some examples of local constraints some educators may want to require:

• This collaboration includes creative writing components that do not necessarily substantially relate to a journalism curriculum. You may choose to disallow creative submissions.
• You may require minimum lengths for essay, poem, and creative writing submissions.
• You may require that all submissions be newsworthy in nature and include an interview component.
• You can require a certain number of photos be submitted to qualify as a photo essay.

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Make local constraints clear

If you choose to add local constraints, please make those constraints clear to your students. Since we don't know what your local constraints are, we can't verify that submissions fulfill them.

How should I grade this assignment?

If you choose to grade this assignment, please grade this assignment at your own discretion. PBJ is not offering grading guidelines.

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For grading, ask for submissions to be turned in locally

If you would like to grade this assignment, please ask that the student turn in their submission locally (i.e. to you). We will be unable to provide submissions back to journalism advisers. We are also unable to provide individual feedback, grades, or ratings.

What is the general timeline?

We expect to follow this timeline: