For the Reporter
When Gov. Jay Inslee signed the Student Press Rights bill into law on Wednesday, it was partly because a journalism teacher and his students invited a state senator from their district to visit their class.
Tom Kaup, Auburn High School’s newspaper and yearbook adviser, and his journalism students welcomed state Sen. Joe Fain, R-Auburn, to their classroom in 2016. The visit so inspired Fain that he sponsored legislation guaranteeing that students – not school officials – are responsible for the content in student-produced media.
For this and for Fain’s effort to promote the bill through its two-year journey to the governor’s desk, Kaup has earned the highest honor given by the Washington Journalism Education Association (WJEA.) Kaup received the Dorothy McPhillips Distinguished Service Award at WJEA’s state conference on March 10 at Glacier Peak High School in Snohomish.
Former (now retired) Auburn adviser Fern Valentine, in nominating Kaup, said, “By inviting Sen. Joe Fain to his journalism classroom and showing him how much more students learn on a student-controlled media staff, we gained a true champion who spearheaded the law’s long trip through the Legislature.”
“I’m very humbled and overwhelmed with recognition by fellow advisers and people who I think do far more than I,” Kaup said.
The Dorothy McPhillips Award is not given every year; rather, it is presented when a teacher contributes in an extraordinary way to improving scholastic journalism in the state of Washington.
About Tom Kaup
The Nebraska hog farm values of simplicity and hard work have stayed with Thomas Kaup, even though life has taken him far from there. Kaup graduated secnd out of 17 students from Stuart Public High School in 1976. Kaup received a bachelor of arts degree in English at the University of St. Thomas in 1980, a Licentiate in Sacred Theology from the University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, Ill., in 1986, and a master’s degree in educational design from Western Governors University in 2013. Kaup completed his certification in career and technical education at South Seattle College in the spring of 2017 and is a part-time instructor in the CTE certification program there.
Kaup began teaching in 1985, and started advising journalism in 1995. A member of the Journalism Education Association since 1996, he is a master journalism educator and has also been a National Board Certified teacher since 2004.
Kaup’s career took him into middle school, where he advised yearbook and newspaper at George Russell Middle School in Omaha, Neb. He was then recruited by the Omaha Public Schools to help found a communications magnet school, Alice Buffett Magnet Middle School. While there, he co-wrote a textbook, “Middle School Journalism”, published by Teaching-Point.Inc of Florida.
After a move to Auburn in 2007, Kaup became active in the WJEA and served on the board of directors for several years. In 2014 he was named the Washington Journalism Teacher of the Year, and honored in 2015 by the Dow Jones News Fund as a special recognition adviser. In 2016, Kaup was named the Auburn High School Teacher of the Year by the Auburn Parent Teacher Association.
About the Dorothy McPhillips Distinguished Service Award
Dorothy McPhillips was president of WJEA in the early ‘80s, then was elected president of the national Journalism Education Association in 1983. For the next 15 years, McPhillips advanced the status of scholastic journalism nation-wide through her research proving the value of student journalism programs and her outreach to elevate the status of journalism education in our schools. She encouraged states to pass “anti-Hazelwood” legislation after the landmark 1988 Supreme Court decision, which diminished student autonomy over content in their student media. The first effort to pass anti-Hazelwood legislation in Washington state in 1992 was led by McPhillips. WJEA created the Distinguished Service Award in her honor in recognition of her significant contributions and to spotlight the outstanding contributions of others.
