Prior to arriving at Rockridge, I had taught plenty of English courses but never worked with a journalism or publications course. To be honest, I entered college back in the mid-80's planning on becoming a journalist. I had been on the yearbook and newspaper staff at Rockridge ('84 graduate), and I actually had worked as a correspondent for a local weekly and daily newspaper in the Quad Cities. While at Augustana, I even earned college work study money through a job in the Sports Information Department.
When hired at Rockridge and discovering that I was going to get a chance to be the yearbook and newspaper adviser, I was thrilled. I was returning home to help other students capture the journalism bug and discover the fun in covering and sharing stories.
I soon realized, though, that times had changed. Due to a lack of interest, the journalism course was going to be dropped. The administration asked me to try to keep the school newspaper going without the journalism course, so I agreed. After all, every high school should have a school newspaper, right? The end of the journalism course, though, turned out to be just the beginning. I soon found out that the fund balance in the yearbook fund was "problematic", which would impact not only how much we could do with the yearbook and some sort of newspaper, but would also impact equipment and supply purchases.
Three years later....trying about everything and anything possible to generate more interest in journalism and a school newspaper and a yearbook, five students have registered for the course for the 2017-18 school year.
Confession #1 - I'm not much fun. I've tried to interject activities and energy to help the course be fun, but a publication eventually comes down to someone spending time and energy learning about a particular story and then working to share that story - through words, pics, video, audio, etc...
Confession #2 - I'm not happy with mediocrity. During these past three years I have plunged myself into professional development and training to produce publications according to established professional standards. I worked hard to learn the "do's" and "don'ts" of publications. I learned that I want the yearbook and the newspaper to be more than boring stories and selfies.
Confession #3 - I struggle assigning good grades for bad effort. While trying to consistently find ways to be encouraging and motivating, most of the students I've worked with aren't interested in producing quality. Most just want a grade. Yet, most also want to spend as little time and effort possible towards the project that is receiving the grade.
In short, despite wanting to rescue a drowning publications department, I'm pretty sure I've killed it. I've never handled losing well, but this one hurts.
Hoping your day and your efforts are working out better for you. And I'm hoping the next adviser at Rockridge experiences better success because each school does deserve to have a quality school newspaper and yearbook.
JBiz
No comments:
Post a Comment