Cassreino heads St. Joe's award-winning journalism program

    Terry R. Cassreino is a national award-winning high school journalism teacher who also serves as communications director for St. Joseph Catholic School.
    
    Education is a second career for Cassreino, who spent more than 25 years as an award-winning journalist, political columnist and investigative reporter for several Mississippi newspapers and owner of his own media consulting company Cassreino Consulting LLC.
    
    Before teaching, Cassreino served as Capitol Bureau Chief for 13 years at The Sun Herald in Gulfport, managing editor for eight months at The Madison County Journal, assistant managing editor for four years at The Meridian Star and assistant managing editor for 15 months at the Hattiesburg American. 

 

    Cassreino, 62, enrolled in Teach Mississippi Institute in 2010 – the two-year teacher certification program for professionals offered through the University of Mississippi. Cassreino received his teaching certificate from the Mississippi State Department of Education in 2011 and began teaching English 8 that fall. 
    
    In August 2012, Cassreino began rebuilding St. Joseph Catholic School’s journalism program, quickly turning it into the state’s premier student media program. Cassreino teaches Print Journalism, Broadcast Journalism and, beginning this all, Sports Journalism – which students in eighth through 12th grades can take as an elective for an entire school year. He also teaches a nine-week journalism class for seventh graders, who receive a crash course in the basics of broadcast journalism before producing their own full-length video newscast at the end of the course. 

 

    Cassreino's students manage and edit an online student newspaper, The Bear Facts; edit and produce the school yearbook, The Shield; produce and staff a Friday morning weekly video newscast “Bruin News Now”; produce and staff a Wednesday morning news update show, the “BNN Midweek Paws”; produce and staff live sports coverage of varsity football, varsity girls and boys basketball and varsity baseball; produce and host and a weekly radio show and podcast called “The Bruin Buzz Live.” 

 

    The radio show/podcast and sports play-by-play air live on WJXC-LP Jackson, Mississippi Catholic Radio, 107.9. WJXC’s studio is in Cassreino’s classroom. His journalism students produce the only local programming for the station that otherwise airs Eternal World Television Network, EWTN, radio programming seven days a week 24 hours a day. The audio portion of live sporting events is also available as part of live video streaming of these events on the Bruin News Now YouTube Channel. 

 

    Before converting to a 100 percent digital online platform, The Bear Facts was named one of the nation’s top 50 high school newspapers by the Columbia Scholastic Press Association in New York City. The Mississippi Scholastic Press Association has named “Bruin News Now” Mississippi’s top high school newscast in 2017 and 2018 as well as a finalist for the award in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023. 

 

    Cassreino's students have twice been named Mississippi's High School Journalist of the Year. His students also have received the prestigious Orley Hood Award for Excellence in High School Journalism (named after longtime popular Clarion-Ledger newspaper sports writer and columnist Orley Hood) seven of the 10 times the honor has been awarded. The winners receive a plaque from the MSPA and their name, along with all other Orley Hood Award recipients, appears on an award that hangs in the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame & Museum in Jackson.

 

    Some of Cassreino's students have studied accounting, political science, business, law and journalism in college. Students who have studied journalism have interned with the Memphis Grizzlies NBA team, ESPN and CBS News' "60 Minutes." All have credited his class for teaching important life skills they have used in any fields they have studied. 

 

    The Journalism Education Association at the University of Kansas named Cassreino the National High School Broadcast Adviser of the Year for 2023, the first time a Mississippi educator received the prestigious award. The JEA also named Cassreino a Distinguished Broadcast Adviser in 2022 and a Special Recognition Broadcast Adviser in 2020. Besides that, Cassreino is a two-time runner-up for the Dow Jones News Fund National High School Journalism Teacher of the Year in 2014 and 2015. He also is a four-time Mississippi Scholastic Press Association high school journalism adviser of the year and has been a finalist for the honor each of the past six years. 

 

    Cassreino is licensed by the Mississippi Department of Education and the Midsouth Association of Independent Schools, or the MAIS, to teach high school English and journalism. He has a school administrator license through the MAIS. And he is a JEA-certified journalism educator. 

 

    Cassreino, a New Orleans native, is a 1979 graduate of Jesuit High School in New Orleans. He earned bachelor’s degrees in Journalism and in Radio & TV in May 1985 from the University of Mississippi. He earned a master’s degree in Educational Leadership, with a Catholic education emphasis, in December 2017 from the University of Dayton.

   

    Cassreino is married to the former Pamela Vance of Madison, who also teaches at St. Joseph Catholic School. They have two children, Camryn, who will be a freshman this fall at Mississippi College in Clinton, and Matthew, who will be a sophomore this fall at St. Joe. The Cassreinos attend St. Joseph Catholic Church in Gluckstadt.