Konnie Krislock is well known to all those around here as fierce, sassy and extremely passionate. She is a fighter, a teacher and a unique individual. Yet Krislock is not one to brag, and for this reason there is one very important thing many people don’t know about her: she has been altering the course of high school journalism since the 1960s and will continue to fight for student rights until her dying day, she says.

In the past two months, she has appeared at a school board meeting in Newbury Park and at the principal’s office at Mayfair (Long Beach) defending the rights of student journalists.

Krislock had a strong passion for journalism that grew during her sophomore year at Tracy High School (Tracy, California). She has been “fighting the system” since then. In the mid-1970s, she took a stand at Redondo High School when the administration announced that they would be censoring student articles about the Vietnam War. Students had protested against the war and were promoting peace yet they were being attacked by administrators and were told to remove their work because it was not appropriate.

“I believe administrators are always afraid of what parents will say about student printed ideas,” Krislock said. “I know some young people’s ideas are edgy and make old people [and administrators] cringe,” she said.

She believes she is here to change that way of thinking.

“I teach students that bravery is a necessary skill for a journalist,”  Krislock said.

Krislock has shaped young journalists to not be scared of what is out there and to find stories that will raise questions and make readers wonder. She wants young people to find the truth and speak the truth even if it is hard and to write with the passion of the heart.

Some of the student journalists she has defended are now famous writers or editors. She gets regular emails from her old apprentices who tell her they still use the skills she has taught them.

Her two main goals in life is being good mother and a good teacher.

“I believe because I get feedback on both of those goals on a regular basis that I have succeeded,” she said.

Read more about Krislock’s activism in Bravely, students press on in the Spring 2015 edition of California Publisher.