Posted by Paul Kandell, a member of the Palo Alto High School community, on Sep 12, 2012 at 7:13 pm

Kudos to my colleague, the extraordinary Ellen Austin, on her well-deserved award. She's a pioneer in 21st century scholastic journalism and an inspiration for her colleagues and students. Paly is lucky to have her. Have a great year, Ellen.

Posted by Paly alum, a resident of the Duveneck/St. Francis neighborhood, on Sep 12, 2012 at 9:45 pm

Two top awards in three years! Well done, Paly, and congratulations to Ms. Austin! Coming on the heels of Mr. Kandel's award this is really cool!

Posted by Sylvia, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Sep 13, 2012 at 11:15 am

Wow. This teacher sounds like an amazing combination of talent and energy. Our school district is very lucky to have her.

Congratulations on having been nationally recognized to Ellen Austin.

Posted by Jon, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Sep 13, 2012 at 12:06 pm

I doubt we will hear from the "PAUSD Could Do Better" folks on this but this is a tremendous achievement....

Posted by Nit picker, a resident of the Leland Manor/Garland Drive neighborhood, on Sep 13, 2012 at 3:49 pm

The University of Illinois at Champaign.

Posted by Grateful Parent, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Sep 13, 2012 at 9:53 pm

Jon: I have been following the work of WCDBPA in advocating for our young people across the district. Whenever I attended a school board meeting and a member of WCDBPA was present they seemed to have no problem recognizing the many outstanding teachers and staff in our district and, in point of fact, they have been quite vocal at giving credit where credit is due. I am glad that they have been willing to help improve conditions at our schools. We need more active parent groups in addition to the PTAs.

The focus of this article in on Ms. Austin. She is to be commended for this great honor! How fortunate we all are as a district to have teachers of this caliber in our schools!

Posted by Scotty Bara, Photo Editor of The Viking Magazine, a resident of the Crescent Park neighborhood, on Sep 16, 2012 at 11:15 am

Ms.Austin is truly passionate about about her job as an advisor for our sports magazine, The Viking. She has created a leading edge in journalism at Paly for the digital world. I think she definitely deserved the Dow Jones Journalism Teacher of the Year award.

Posted by teach every child, a resident of the Adobe-Meadows neighborhood, on Sep 16, 2012 at 5:19 pm

Actually Jon, within an hour of this story being posted, School Board Candidate Ken Dauber posted it to his facebook page at Web Link with this glowing message of praise for Ms. Austin:

"I visited a Paly journalism class this week to discuss my campaign for school board. It is a truly impressive program and the kids were great. Kudos for a great program and great teachers that increase community engagement and achievement.

Your comment is just intended to hijack a thread about Ms. Austin's stellar performance by making unfounded allegations and attracting the trolls who hang out on this anonymous board.