The enthusiasm of youth
Monday, November 26th, 2007So far I’m enjoying education reporting. But by far the hardest part is not dealing with picky parents or paranoid officials. No. The hardest part is the kids.
Of course, children are notoriously hard to interview. Younger children tend to clam up or just answer “yes,” “no” or shrug their shoulders to questions. But the hard part, for me, is who I don’t interview. Whenever I go on assignment many of the kids are excited that a reporter is in their midst. Some of them are shy (which is the hard to interview part) but a few come up to me and ask to be interviewed. Or, worse yet, I have a teacher or official who asks me to interview 10 students individually.