2022 Kansas Master Teacher Barbara Tholen

Walking into the newsroom where she worked at the time, Barbara Tholen did not know the ringing phone would be a job offer that would change her life.

As a reporter 10 years into her career working for The Topeka Capitol Journal and The Kansas City Star, Tholen had plenty of content knowledge, but no idea how to teach it. She began her teaching career with a “mix of eager naiveté and a deep desire to get it right for my students. The naiveté has faded. The deep desire to do better hasn’t.”

When Tholen literally got the call to teach, her steep learning curve began as she prepared to teach while taking graduate classes to learn how to teach. She had earned her bachelor’s in print journalism from Kansas State University in 2000, and when she started at Lawrence High School in 2010 she started towards her master’s degree in teaching which she earned from Baker University in 2012.

Known for respecting students’ opinions and cultivating their creative abilities, Tholen consults with professional journalists and student press organizations when needed to guide students. In her time as a newspaper and yearbook advisor and journalism teacher, her students have won numerous student press awards and two recent editors received full rides to Stanford and Harvard, boosted by work they did as journalism leaders.

When the pandemic hit, and high school yearbooks everywhere fell behind, Tholen stepped up, and not just for her school. A fellow yearbook advisor and mentor of Tholen’s was fighting cancer, so Tholen stepped in, coordinated other area yearbook advisors, and together they helped produced a yearbook for the colleague’s school. That yearbook won a top rating from the Kansas Scholastic Press Association.

“The advice and compassion she displays on a seemingly endless tank is why our program succeeds so much, why she is the best teacher I will ever have,” writes a former student.

“I’ve had students who graduated by the narrowest of margins thrive as leaders in journalism,” Tholen states. “The door, I have found, always has to be open for a student to shine.”