Former Lakewood teacher Kathleen Tobin is loving her new career at Poynter. She retired last year after being a journalism teacher for 15 years.  She is now the Youth Programming Manager for MediaWise, a non-profit news literacy program at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, FL.

Tobin works with many teenagers from across the United States on creating videos for TikTok and YouTube that fact-check stories in the news and social media posts online.

“I like it because I still get to work with teenagers, and to be honest it is a lot less stressful than teaching high school,” Tobin said.

From Tobin’s three careers of being a journalist, a journalism teacher and her job right now she surprisingly does not have a favorite “I like them all equally,” she said.

Tobin said that the biggest difference is that she works with people online so she cannot see and build bonds like she could in person.

She said she misses the kids she got to know but does not miss grading. Although Tobin has retired from being a journalism teacher, she plans on fully retiring in a couple years, she said.

Tobin said if she could say anything to her formal journalists, it would be “to keep on looking for good stories to tell about what’s going on around you. Make sure you’re – as we say at SNN – ‘giving a voice to the voiceless.’ That’s your job! You have one of the best journalism programs around and you should keep it up and be proud!”