Miss! Miss!!

APOLOGIES to all for the lack of posts of late, but as you will read, I'm now FAR too busy and important to be knocking about with you lot.

As of the middle of September, I will be a Professor of Journalism...

Right, ok, a TEACHER of Journalism...

Alright already, I'll be working with a local youth project, TALKING about journalism, are you happy now?

Yes, it looks as though the dry work spell may be coming to an end and the type of work that I'm really interested in is in the pipeline and all ready to go.

From the middle of September I'll be involved in a journalism/writing course within the media group of a youth project in Dublin, working with teenage boys.

The group has been together for a year and have already done some page layout, design, poster design, photography and even stand-up comedy so the writing part is the next step, and that's where I come in.

Without wanting to sound overly dramatic or fake B-Movie weepy, this is a dream come true for me. I've always wanted to teach, but not in a traditional classroom environment, so this is absolutely perfect.

The young lads, as you can imagine, probably won't be interested in sitting in a room listening to me drone on and on about boring writing techniques so the challenge for me is to draw up the course content and syllabus, to make it fun and interesting for them.

I'll be arranging for people to come in for them to interview (perhaps a local band or sports personality), bringing them out for vox pops (street surveys), showing them how to research using the Internet, libraries and books and finally getting them to write some articles which may be published in the youth group's newsletter.

It's a kind of pilot project for six weeks, but hopefully if it goes well and is successful then there's scope for it to be rolled out to other groups within the project and maybe even extended for longer to the original group.

I am so grateful for the chance to do this and the opportunity I've been given, after all I've never taught before so they're taking a real chance on me, and I keep getting little flashes of excitement and clenching my fist in victory on the bus. I'm starting to scare commuters.

Now that the initial excitement is over with I'm starting to get a little nervous and I have The Fear that I'll start to weep on the first day and they'll all give me funny looks, but I'm trying not to think about that!

Over the next few weeks I'll be drawing up the course content and researching into working with young people, so if anyone has any advice or has worked with youth groups or projects before, please mail me and give me the benefit of your experience.

Please! Or there'll be a Kaz-shaped hole in my door!