Interviews with Experts
Every issue of Junior Scholastic comes with an interview with specialists, educational professionals, and inspiring figures in journalism. Look for tips on everything from teaching twins to how to engage students when creating lessons on colonial history.
JS Talks to Former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor
In 1981, President Ronald Reagan appointed Sandra Day O’Connor to the United States Supreme Court. At the time, O’Connor was serving on the Arizona Court of Appeals. Most Americans had never heard of her. The former Supreme Court Justice tells JS about the U.S. Constitution, the document that binds our nation together.
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"Helping to Build Global Citizens"
A Conversation With Hale Edwards
Last fall, the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) selected Hale Edwards as the NCSS Middle School Teacher of the Year. "I just do what I do because I love it," Edwards told her local paper after receiving the award. "I just love my kids. I love my job, and I will do just about anything I can to help them become really good citizens of this planet." Recently, JS asked Edwards, who teaches seventh-grade world history at Riverside Middle School in Greer, South Carolina, about her life's work.
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"You Have to Have a Fire"
A Conversation With Brian Williams
As a young man, Brian Williams served as a White House intern. Today, he is better known as the anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News. He has also lectured journalism students at Columbia University. Last month, Scholastic Kid Reporters Kajal Jani and Jack Greenberg, both 11, interviewed Williams at the Nightly News studios in New York City. Because this is a presidential election year, it is no surprise that politics was the main topic of conversation. Here are some excerpts.
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"Faith in the Human Spirit"
A Conversation With Cassandra Nelson
Cassandra Nelson wrote the April 14, 2006, JS article on deforestation in Afghanistan while she was visiting the country and took photos as well. She has done a number of other stories for us in past issues. Nelson's work takes her to some of the very places we'd like stories from, so it's lucky for us that she freelances as a photojournalist. The globetrotting Nelson recently took some time to tell us about her work and the world as she knows it.
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"How Do We Move Forward?"
A Conversation With David Wilson
David Wilson recently paid a visit to Scholastic's New York offices, along with his friend Daniel Woolsey. Their documentary, Meeting David Wilson, debuted on MSNBC on April 11, 2007. The film is the profoundly American story of a young man's search for his identity. Along the way, he meets another David Wilson-the great-great-grandson of the man who enslaved his ancestors. "Even if we're not related by blood," the other David Wilson told him, "we're related through history." Here are excerpts from our conversation with filmmakers Daniel Woolsey and David A. Wilson.
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"History Is About Human Beings"
A Conversation With David McCullough
David McCullough, an esteemed historian and Pulitzer Prize winner, is the author of John Adams, the biography on which the HBO Films and Playtone miniseries of the same name was based. Here are some excerpts from an HBO interview in which McCullough talks about John Adams, his importance in the nation's history, and the world in which he lived.
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Teaching Twins
A Conversation With Dr. Nancy Segal
Dr. Nancy Segal is professor of developmental psychology as well as Director of the Twin Studies Center at California State University, Fullerton. She is the author of Indivisible by Two: Lives of Extraordinary Twins and Entwined Lives. Her involvement with twins is personal as well as professional: She has a fraternal twin sister. Segal shared with JS some of her knowledge about teaching twins.
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