Reflecting on 2023 with Reporter Jolie Peal

This holiday season, Nebraska Public Media is reflecting on stories and topics our newsroom has covered over the past year. Our team is made up of ten reporters, each one with their own beat. A beat is a an area of focus that a reporter caters their stories to. For example, typical beats include education, health, government and agriculture.

Reporter Jolie Peal joined Nebraska Public Media in 2023. Her beat is education. In 2023, Peal covered budget cuts, the NU Board of Regents president search, new FAFSA applications and many other important stories. To her, one of the most memorable stories was talking about Educators Rising, an organization working to help with teacher shortages. Peal sat down with Nebraska Public Media’s Dale Johnson to reflect.

DALE: Well, this past year, Jolie talked with teachers at all grade levels, was among the first to get to know Nebraska’s new Commissioner of Education Brian Maher, and recently caught up with University of Nebraska Regents Chair Tim Clare for an update on the search for a new system president, so she’s been busy. Thank you Jolie for some time. What attracted you to reporting on education?

JOLIE: Well, I'd say there was two reasons. The first was when I was hired, there was a need for an education reporter. And the second was, I think education is a really vast topic. There's a lot of stories out there. And it's really important right now. It's something that connects everyone. And I think everyone cares about education. So I love getting to cover it and find the different stories that people maybe haven't heard about yet.

DALE: It kept you busy. Of all the stories you covered in 2023. Which one stands out to you?

JOLIE: I think the one that stands out to me is my story on Educators Rising, it was my very first feature story for Nebraska Public Media News. So it kind of has a special place in my heart. And I hadn't seen a lot of coverage of it. So it was kind of exciting to be one of the first to really cover the program. It's a program that takes high school students and gets them started on the teaching pathway and helps them learn those skills early. And so it was a really cool story to get to cover.

DALE: In that piece, you talk to a first grade teacher at Wheeler Elementary in Millard, who was drawn to Educators Rising as you were, she was drawn to it in high school, what impressed you about her?

JOLIE: She very much loved teaching, and I think that really showed when I talked with her. And something I really enjoyed about her was that Educators Rising showed her not only that she wanted to teach, but that she wanted to take it further and go into administration. And I thought that was really interesting, because education’s facing a lot of challenges right now. And it's really hard to just be a teacher, but then to want to even go further and get into an administrative role and potentially one day, be a principal or even go further than that, and she wants to do that. And I thought it was kind of inspiring.

DALE: Her excitement comes through in your piece. The story aired in late July. So fast forward, what does the teacher shortage look like going into the new year?

JOLIE: It's a little hard to tell right now, because there's not up to date data about this school year. But from last school year, it's definitely still an issue. The ’20, was that 2022 to ’23, they just released data for that school year, the Nebraska Department of Education and it showed that it very much is still a problem. There was a decrease of 275 teachers from the previous school year from ’21 to ’22, to ’22 to ’23 school year. And they also had a teacher vacancy report, which was referenced in my story where it showed there was more than 750 positions that were vacant or filled with people that weren't necessarily qualified for those positions. And I think it'll be interesting to see if that's still going into this school year how that looks, if it's still an issue. Nebraska Department of Education Commissioner Brian Maher said it's still something that comes up in conversations he's having that when he visits schools, it's how are we going to solve this problem of the teacher shortage?

DALE: Teachers are in it because they have a passion for education. I get that and they like kids. Did you, in your piece, talk to teachers who felt overwhelmed, felt that it's tough getting up in the morning, because they are asked of so much every day?

JOLIE: I don't think in the Educators Rising piece necessarily, but it's something I hear about when I'm talking with teachers. Like I have friends who are teachers where it's very overwhelming and challenging, and they feel like they need to kind of battle some days - maybe that's not the right word - but it can be hard. It's, you know, you're taking care of maybe like 20 students at least. And that's a lot.

DALE: Some classrooms are in their low 30s….

JOLIE: Yeah.

DALE: …Depending on the district. Education’s a big world that you handle every day out of the Nebraska Public Media newsroom. So what's out there for you to chase in 2024?

JOLIE: What I really like about my beat and everything I cover is that I don't just cover K through 12 or just Higher Ed. I get to cover like the whole board. I have a lot of stories about early childhood education that are kind of running around in my mind and daycares and how parents are preparing their kids for K through 12. And even just on the college level, how colleges are responding to the teacher shortage and how they're trying to kind of throw their two cents into help. So I'm pretty excited.

DALE: You can find the teacher shortage story that we've been talking about today on nebraskapublicmedia.org. Got a lot of things ahead of you. Thank you, Jolie.

JOLIE: Thanks, Dale.

DALE: And happy new year. I'm Dale Johnson, Nebraska Public Media News.