Who is Woj?

If you have not yet heard of her don't worry -- you soon will! The Carnegie Foundation for the for the Advancement of Teaching is currently sponsoring a research initiative into Woj's methodology and educational practices, led by Kim Austin. As if that was not enough, upcoming New York Times and Fortune Magazine articles chronicling Woj's amazing success are in the works!

Esther Wojcicki leads the journalism program at Palo Alto High School, Palo Alto, California, where she has been teaching for 13 years several of the journalism courses. She is constantly innovating and improving her teaching, which lately has adapted to include technology. Moreover, she also advises both the award winning school newspaper, The Campanile and the recently created school magazine, Verde.

Her students adore her, and are publicly recognized as true journalists. They are constantly raising the standard for High-School journalism, fearlesly uncovering controversies even at the School district level, and successfully challenging the status quo. Most of them go on to pursue degrees at the top universities in the country.

Currently, Woj is participating on the National Challenge 2000 Multimedia Project, Integrating Project Based Learning with Multimedia, after coaching in 1999 the Gold Award Winner of the ThinkQuest challenge: The Art of Japan which her students at Palo Alto HighSchool completed. The site has garnered considerable attention, and was recently chosen by the Exploratorium on-line as one of their ten monthly cool sites. The students were responsible for the design, content and implementation of this gorgeous foray into Japanese artistic expressions.