Alba Mendiola was at the peak of her career about seven years ago. As an investigative reporter for Telemundo in Chicago, she had won seven Emmy Awards in 16 years.
It was at that pinnacle that Mendiola decided to leave journalism for another dream: she wanted to be a teacher.
Now, the former broadcaster has reached a new milestone by receiving the Alan C. Miller Educator of the Year award from the News Literacy Project.
The nonprofit recognized Mendiola for her work at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Chicago, where she created a bilingual broadcast journalism class with a strong focus on news literacy and media ethics. All of the school’s students are bilingual in English and Spanish and come from low-income families.
EdSurge contacted Mendiola by phone while visiting family in Mexico during summer vacation. He talked about making the leap from journalism to education and why the most tech-savvy generation of students still needs a guiding hand to navigate the media landscape.
EdSurge: You were very successful as a broadcast journalist and ran Telemundo Chicago’s consumer research unit before you became a teacher. Why did you want a change?
Alba Mendiola: My students always ask me, “Why did you leave?”
It’s like, “Why not?” [Laughs.]
I’ve always said that my only regret is that I didn’t leave sooner. I really enjoy being a teacher. I always used this analogy: it’s like climbing a mountain. I decided to quit when I was at the top of my career and start a new project and a new mountain.
And I’m happy doing what I do, teaching students, helping them develop their critical thinking skills. Doing this job, it’s like being in heaven.
In this job, you can combine your love of journalism with teaching. Where did you get your love for teaching? Is it something that came from your family?
I was a television reporter in Mexico, then I left it to continue my [American] boyfriend, now my husband, to the US.
When I came to the United States, I did a volunteer program through the Archdiocese. [of Chicago] where I was teaching adults in a job readiness program. Most of the people in my class were low-income or female victims of domestic violence.
Just being in a classroom and knowing that you are changing someone’s life is very moving. But then I had this journalistic error in me. I returned [to journalism] and worked at Telemundo for 16 years. So teaching, it’s not new to me.
You proposed this class in broadcast journalism to your school. When you were developing the class, what was your vision?
I wrote an opinion piece in La Raza called “Media literacy is a civil right” — Media literacy is a human right. And that’s where I express my idea for the class, saying that the students of this generation are born in the digital age and it is almost integrated. They know how to open these apps, and much of their information comes from their news sources. But the reality is that they really don’t know how it works and what it takes to do it.
These kids barely remember what a landline is. They don’t watch TV like we watch TV. Everything is changing, and it’s not your fault. This is how the world evolves, and they need to understand the ethics of creating information.
Because one of the questions I ask them in my first class is: “Do you want to be informed or do you want to be influenced?” Because they are all the time on their TikTok or on their Instagram looking at those feeds. You are watching commercials. They are trying to get you to buy something or get you to do something and not necessarily inform you. So you have to be a bit skeptical. Sometimes [students] I don’t know what the difference is between a commercial and a news story.
So we went through those lessons, and my goal for this class is to try to build your critical thinking skills. They have to understand how the media works. Once they understand how it works and they commit and participate in the democratic process and make their own decisions, maybe in the future they can be leaders too. Especially knowing the differences between facts and misleading news. It has recently been a big problem in the United States.
Why do you think it is important that these types of classes are bilingual?
We could be from different countries, Venezuelans, Mexicans, Colombians and Cubans, but at the end of the day, what keeps us together is the language. Many [immigrants] They come here and learn English, but they still want to know what is happening in their country.
I can tell you right now, and media literacy in general, this is not just for students, it’s also for adults, sometimes they don’t know how to recognize fact from fiction.
Now, with AI, it’s so hard to recognize. To give you an example, my mom lives here in Mexico. She’s 82, but let me tell you, this woman has her iPhone, she shops online, she’s very tech-savvy.
But she understands this where you see Biden, you can hear his voice at a press conference and he says something like, “Yeah, the UFOs have landed. Yes, we know this is happening.”
And my mom was like, “What is this?” And then I’m like, “No, Mom, that’s fake. That’s not real.
if you go to News Literacy Project, in the lessons, there is also a lot of information about immigration: how immigration has been written about in different newspapers and through images that have been published online. For example, a child who is in a cage. The way they write that story, it could be misleading. So we learn all about how they can manipulate images, how they can manipulate information to get your attention.
Do students gain hands-on experience reporting a story?
We create podcasts, we create visuals, we create videos. They get excited when I say, “Okay, let’s work on a video project.”
And once you force them to do it, they realize how difficult it is. I would say, “In the past, ethics-trained journalists worked on a story and gave it to you. It’s already cured for you. And now anyone with a cell phone can call themselves a journalist. If he has a phone, he can broadcast live from anywhere in the world and no one will check if he is correct or if his data is correct or not”.
Once they start doing whatever it takes to shoot the video and write a story or write a podcast, that’s when they realize, “Oh wow. This takes time and effort to get right.”
I think that’s the part that stands out to them the most, and it’s the “aha” moment when we talk about bias. We all have it, and it’s okay. Now we just have to be aware of it. I love seeing that because this is one of the first units we do. And then at the end, they have to create something and they realize, “I can’t give my opinion on this.” No, you have to try to write a story in a way that you just present all the facts, and your readers or your listeners or your viewers have to make a decision about whether it’s right or wrong, good or bad.
What else do you want people to know about your class?
I am very honored that the News Literacy Project nominated me for this award. This is important to our Latino communities because this organization doesn’t just recognize me. They are recognizing the need for bilingual media literacy education.
And one more thing: I remember another reporter asked me, so why is media literacy important? Typically, school districts attach the news literacy unit or this topic to English class. But I have a different opinion about it, and I wrote it in my opinion piece, that you don’t have to be a mathematician to study mathematics. That doesn’t mean you’re going to become a mathematician. If you study science, that doesn’t mean you’re going to be a scientist.
What I’m trying to say is, for example, in math class, you can get students to learn how grades work, and that’s part of what news literacy is all about. In science class, how technology measures tornadoes for the weather segment. Or in history class, you can analyze old newspapers and see how certain events in history were written. And then my favorite is what I do in language classes. You can analyze news in Spanish, Portuguese, German, Polish, any other language.
Everyone needs to know how the news works. So that’s my small contribution, and I encourage teachers to consider this, especially since the News Literacy Project already has lessons for you, so it will be easier for you to plan your day.
