Now, photoj was a struggle because I know very little about photography. I did find everything that I could online and communicating with other teachers. Even though we had not resources (cameras, computers, software), we were able to get by using smartphones.
The yearbook was great. The kids were involved, they did all of the work and really created an awesome book. Really anything was better than the year before because there was some name calling that caused all of the books to get sent back to the publisher and had to be redone. The reputation of the yearbook was shot and no one wanted to buy it. We didn't have nearly as many sales as I had wanted, but I did finish with money in the bank, which had not happened in several year.
I definitely dropped the ball with the newspapers. The paper was supposed to come out once per 6 weeks. I got 3 done. The problem is that there is no budget and I had to sell advertisements. It was disastrous! So, when the associate principal told me, "You did great with the yearbook this year, but you have to work on the newspaper next year," I wasn't surprised.
Alan Weintraut's session on staff organization and management is definitely what I need to work on getting the newspaper on the right track.
One of Alan's slides of a sample staff organization web.
Divona Phillips
Irving High School
Irving, Texas
Divona, I think when you're first starting out in journalism there's always something that's falling behind, especially that first year. There's only so much you can do and you can only spread yourself so thin.
ReplyDeleteI definitely dropped the ball on our barely existing website, which hadn't been updated forever, I didn't have rights to it, and ultimately it just went defunct and went wherever websites go to die. This year, I'm determined to not only revive, but rock the online edition of our publication. I feel this institute gave me the skills that will help me make this a reality and not just keep it as a soap bubble dream.
I think Alan had a lot of great tips on how to set up and structure an efficient newspaper staff. What he said about treating them as adults and delegate responsibilities. This has worked out really well for my students who have been doing a great job at keeping each other accountable. If you achieve that, eventually you can actually get to the point where you can take a step back and truly let your students run the show.
Definitely keep us in the loop on how things are going - you know where to find all of us.
Stephanie Floch
Taylorsville High School
SLC, Utah
I know that organizing staff may have been an elementary topic, but it was really helpful to see how a very experienced adviser organizes. Alan did have some great tips, and I think modeling was one of the rules he gave us. He was a great model for organizing a staff as well as organizing a three week production of the paper. However, I was glad to see that I do one thing he is doing, t-shirts. Yay! I got one right!
ReplyDeleteKathryn Wilkins
Kearns High School
Kearns, Utah