Adjunct Faculty Member Keith Glock regularly teaches a popular Journalism course titled Multimedia Sports Reporting in addition to his jobs as a counselor at Montgomery High School and lacrosse referee.
In Multimedia Sports Reporting, students in the class focus on creating meaningful and open discussion surrounding the sports world and its connection to other aspects of life. Presented with different macro issues, groups rotate through topics such as politics, the media, gender, and analyzing sports through each lens.
Through Professor Glock’s guidance, students work together in groups, conducting interviews with people involved in the sports world, working together to create and produce different podcast episodes and simulate a real-life work environment that will prepare them when they leave school. The students then display the interviews on their class website.
At the core of the class, Professor Glock hopes to encourage his students to have honest and open discussions surrounding not just the sports topics in their class, but also to have healthy discussions around controversial topics where they might disagree.
“Civil discourse is sorely needed within society.” Glock affirms. “I don’t think we’ve trained the next generation of human beings to have those conversations, especially since life is not this or that. Life is the Cheesecake Factory menu.”
When it comes to engagement for the class, Glock has found that this semester has had the largest amount of students that he has had in a single section.
“This semester is the biggest section of this class that I’ve ever taught,” stated Glock. “I didn’t know any students in this particular section.”
Encouraging his students to expand not only in their technical skills, Glock also hopes that his students will think beyond the basic principles of journalism.
“What I want kids to get out of each class that I might teach is that journalism in 2022 is so much more than ‘who, what, when, where, why’.” He shared, “The skills that I want them to walk away with are critical thought, backing up your opinion, and choosing topics that are interesting.”
-Kelly Stephens ’22