When Candace Perkins Bowen was a sixth grader in Des Moines, Iowa, she created a summer school in her basement. Neighborhood kids paid a penny a day to come to class – making Candace hugely popular with parents. At the same time, she was publishing a neighborhood newspaper, tackling the weighty issue of the day – dog leash laws.

Years later, she’d realize those passions for teaching and journalism could make for a pretty significant career.

Candace had attended Iowa State University as a journalism major, rising to managing editor and summer editor in chief at the Iowa State Daily. Marriage and a child changed her immediate priorities, and the young family moved to Wheaton, Ill. Candace discovered that NIU offered a journalism education degree, and a terrific student newspaper in the Northern Star. So, despite the fact she was a wife and mom and had to commute to DeKalb, Candace spent a year and two summer terms at NIU and the Star, where she was a police reporter and later an editor.

But she knew she wanted to be a teacher. A few months after graduating in 1972, Candace was hired to teach journalism and advise the student newspaper at St. Charles High School. She’d stay for 22 successful years. In 1989, she was named Dow Jones National High School Journalism Teacher of the Year.

After teaching for a year in Virginia, Candace jumped to Kent State University in 1995. There, she coordinates the Scholastic Media Program, runs two scholastic press associations and organizes various journalism workshops. She and her husband, John, a retired high school journalism teacher, are active in numerous student press organizations. They’re concerned about the climate of “general paranoia” that student journalists face.

“Principals are afraid that if it doesn’t directly relate to some kind of state test, then why have it in your curriculum?” she says. “And they say if the student press says something bad about your school, why have it at all? I think that’s scary.

Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, calls Candace “a great friend to student journalism and to the First Amendment” who has dedicated most of her life to promoting and defending students’ rights.

“It’s so important for kids to learn by doing,” Candace says, “and you’re not learning by doing if people are telling you what to think.”