When Philippines RPCV David Wiegand retires at the end of this school year, he'll leave behind a nationally recognized legacy of excellence in scholastic journalism
Retiring West mentor empowered kids
Students have won more than 1,800 journalism awards in 20 years under Wiegand's guidance
By Keith Uhlig
Wausau Daily Herald
Wausau, Wis.
May 11, 2005
When David Wiegand retires at the end of this school year, he'll leave behind a nationally recognized legacy of excellence in scholastic journalism.
Since 1985, Wiegand has been the faculty adviser for the Wausau West High School yearbook, Aurora, and for the school newspaper, Warrior's Word. Students under his guidance have won more than 1,800 regional, state and national scholastic journalism honors.
Not bad for a man who graduated from college intending to work in the theater, and whose career zigged and zagged through the educational system.
Before becoming an English instructor at West High in the early 1970s, he taught adults English as a second language in the Philippines during a stint in the Peace Corps, elementary students in Milwaukee and juvenile offenders at Lincoln Hills School. And during the late '70s and early '80s, he left teaching altogether to become a home builder.
But he found his niche when he was asked - he'll say pushed - into becoming the adviser for the student newspaper and the yearbook.
"I was asked, 'What do you know about newspapers?' I said, 'I read one every day,'" Wiegand said. He took the job and ran with it, taking graduate-level courses in journalism and picking the brain of every high school newspaper adviser he could find.
"I literally took notes," Wiegand said. "I think teaching in general does that. You marry whatever you're doing at the time."
Both publications really took off when Wiegand realized that "it wasn't my newspaper and it wasn't my yearbook; they belonged to the kids. ... They're the ones who are worried that a story isn't what it's supposed to be."
Wiegand took a hands-off approach, handing over responsibility to students. But he gave students guidance when they needed it and he set high expectations.
By way of example, Wiegand tells this story.
It has become tradition that students on the newspaper staff work in the summer before school starts to make sure a complete newspaper is in students' hands on the first day of school.
A few years ago, student staffers were struggling, and it appeared as if they weren't going to make their deadlines. Wiegand told them it wasn't the end of the world, and maybe they would have to put the first paper out a week later.
"You'd have thought I had blasphemed right there," he said. The students worked like madmen, and the paper came out on time.
"The whole concept is, here is where we are at and we're going to build on that," Wiegand said.
Senior Kelli Saelee, 18, is editor-in-chief of Warrior's Word. She was overwhelmed when she first took the publications laboratory course, in which class time is used to produce the newspaper and yearbook.
"It's not like a normal class," she said. "You have to get stories, take pictures. You have so much control over what you do."
Saelee said Wiegand lets students find their own ways of getting the job done.
But, she said, "I wouldn't want to slack off too much. I would feel bad because I would let him down."
"He lets us decide where we want to take the paper," said junior Allison Wolfe, 17, the opinion section editor.
Wiegand credits the students and other teachers for the success of the publications.
"I have students in the program that come in with a lot of ability," he said. "They're willing to work, they're excited to learn."
After his last day of school, Wiegand said, he's going to simply lean back, relax and "enjoy weekends without having to grade papers."
He and his wife will flee south during the winters, and he plans to do some freelance writing.
But he knows that he'll miss the students, he said, "that daily interaction."
