The 2013/2014 school year was my first year of teaching English 12 and Journalism. The latter was sort of a happy accident for me: my principal asked me to take over the program all of two weeks before school started and to say I felt overwhelmed was an understatement. I basically jumped into journalism with an abundance of enthusiasm, and all the journalism cramming I could possibly get in before school started. However, I was lucky to have an incredible bunch of students on staff and just barely starting out who probably taught me as much as I taught them and somehow, we made it all work.
I'm still a little dazed and disbelieving at this year's successes, which somehow happened despite all of my newbie flailing and stepping into the rather large footsteps of my predecessor. Journalism has opened so many new venues for me and become my "thing". I'm ridiculously excited for the potential in the program and the opportunities the institute has to offer:
- Actual professional development, oh my!
Maybe this sounds silly and simplistic, but I'm just so excited to get some actual training in all things journalism -- one of the things that I really struggled with during this last year was feeling that despite being the "teacher", I really was in the position of student myself, trying to stay ahead of my students and bringing new ideas to the table, but never quite feeling like I was actually, certifiably "qualified", unless you could reading Tim Harrower's
Inside Reporting for the umpteenth time "qualified" (as awesome and incredibly helpful as this book is). I feel that this program will definitely give the the skills and knowledge to improve my teaching next school year.
- Adobe Photoshop and InDesign Skills
By now I know the basics, but I want to move beyond that and learn more about how to get the best out of Adobe for my program and to share skills and ideas of effective design.
- Build a website for my school's journalism program
I've heard lots of good things about SNO and one of my main goals for next school year is to establish a new online platform for our school's newspaper. We used to have a website that was very poorly updated and no one really kept up with, so it was retired before I took over. After prioritizing our print publication this year, I really want to get the skills and ideas to establish a well-designed, effective news website to add to our shiny new school homepage.
I am looking forward to share and exchange ideas with other journalism teachers. I'm curious to learn what works and what doesn't in other programs and to become a member of this community of journalism teachers. If anything, talking to other teachers, via social media or in person, has been the single most helpful thing I've done since starting to teach and I am excited to expand on that and meet new people to build a professional community with.
Stephanie Floch
Taylorsville High School
Taylorsville, UT
No comments:
Post a Comment