The Power of the Product

When that first issue comes out, watch their faces.

The big box of T-shirts was hauled into the classroom and ripped open.
“The shirts are here!”

So much excitement and energy over cotton! But it was cotton with a meaning. Anyone who’s ever put on a team uniform understands the power in it. The feeling of togetherness becomes tangible. These matching shirts indicating membership in our group – the school newspaper staff – provide a very real status.

This flourish was followed the next day by the delivery from the printer of our first issue of the year. Watch their faces. (The new staffers in particular.) There’s my name! My story! My photo! I laid out that page! Thought of that headline!

The newspaper is a shared product. The creation is shared by the staffers, and then the result is shared by all the school and even the community. Tap into that excitement, to the BIGness of what they’ve accomplished.

As the issue is distributed, you’re sure to get mixed reactions. There may be complaints. There are sure to be some errors. There will also be people who are so excited to have received coverage, to have been quoted or photographed.

Talk about it all. How can we do better next time? What did we do great this time? When a new staffer caught a name misspelling after we published, she came to me and said: “They spelled this girl’s name wrong.” My response was: “No, WE spelled her name wrong.”

Everyone on the staff is encouraged to proofread the pages as we print them out during layout days. Each person – even the most inexperienced – has unique knowledge that is valuable. Yes, the reporter spelled a source’s name wrong, and that is embarrassing. However, it is not only embarrassing to the reporter, but to everyone on the staff who allowed the error through to our finished product.

Following this same philosophy, though, means everyone on the entire staff also shares in the pride of awards or recognition received: "Look at what we all did! It’s ours! This product is partly mine. After all, my T-shirt says so!"

No Wimps Allowed!

This should be posted on the entrance to every teachers lounge across America. And at no time is it more crucial to be un-wimpy than the beginning of the school year.

Setting the tone right away is critical. As adviser, you must remember you are the leader of a group of people who need to come together to accomplish a goal. It’s a different model than teacher as dictator of assignments. (You may need to keep that hat handy for the class period before or after, but for your publication, it goes on the hat rack.) However, scoffing the concept of dictatorship is not the same as relinquishing power altogether.

The beginning of the school year requires itemization of rules (and immediate, strict enforcement of rules), but this does not necessitate a hostile or negative tone. Let the students know: “We must have high standards because what we do is so wonderfully important!”After you step in as the enforcer once or twice, you’ll find the mean you will most likely not be needed the rest of the year.

If someone plagiarizes, he or she WILL have definitive consequences. If someone lies to you or fellow staffers – yes, stiff consequences WILL be the result. You can’t just threaten without action. Say it, mean it, do it. New teachers in particular tend to want to come in as the friend-teacher, and it’s even more tempting in the less structured atmosphere of a publication class. But order must be established.

Whether they know it consciously or not, teens want their parents to act like parents and their teachers to act like teachers. It makes the world a secure place. And everyone pretty universally appreciates the concept of: FAIR. If one person compromises an important standard and nothing happens to that person, well, there go your standards, there goes your word, there goes your status as respected adviser. However, dish out the consequences on the very first offense, and you may never have to do it again.

(My students still gossip about an alleged plagiarist from three years ago. “And he was never seen again!” they whisper. I neither confirm nor deny anything.)

Think of it as creating a fair work environment. Isn’t that what we all want from our bosses? Good performance should be rewarded, and poor adherence to standards should have a negative effect on the perpetrator. It’s not personal; it’s equal treatment. The staff will be able to work with confidence and harbor no resentment toward anyone who unfairly got away with undermining the integrity of the newspaper or yearbook. Keeping the common goal of doing the right thing in the forefront will cause morale to be as high as your standards.

Spread the (Written) Word

Summer’s the best time to avoid burnout. Right? Write!

Students who first enter your class probably have only a dim notion of what journalism is, but they do know somewhat more assuredly that they like to write. That’s what I find with most of the kids who fill the seats in my room. If they like writing, at registration time they look over the electives choices and see Creative Writing or Journalism and then go eeny-meeny.

That’s what happened to me as a teen. I’ve loved to write since before I could actually write. As a tot, I scribbled in imitation of the hand motions of people writing in cursive. Later on, my favorite toy was an old, clunky manual typewriter. This led me to journalism in high school. I still have this love of writing, and I know it’s important to share it with my students – not just the writing, but the LOVE of it.

Sometimes we get so bogged down in teaching or the daily slosh through life that we forget the little things that give us joy. Putting words on a page is one of those things for me. As teachers, we may assume that our students know how we feel: Well, of course I love writing! But they don’t know that. They don’t know that we want so much for them to succeed and to develop the same love we have for our subject. I believe this applies to every area of teaching. Math teachers should tell their students: I love math! Science teachers: Experiments and research make my toes tingle!

As busy adults who get long summer vacations, we teachers have the best opportunity to reconnect with the activities we love. Summer is my time to play writer again, to tappity-type on my computer keyboard and let the words that get clogged up during the school year come rolling out. It works for reading, too. Proofreading students’ stories eats up a lot of eyeball for me most of the year, but in the summer, give me a novel or three. And, I get to read my two local professional newspapers all the way through most days in the summer. What luxury!

It’s important to use the summers to keep from burning out. And then it’s equally important to make sure your students know that you’re not burned out. Tell them: I’m here because I like it, and I know you will, too.

The Fellowship of the Lead

The Reynolds Institute for high school newspaper advisers pulls together all that is journalism.

Last summer at this time I was getting ready to head to Arizona State University for the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ Reynolds Institute. Once there, I was able to bond, commiserate, learn and share with about 35 high school newspaper advisers from around the country. The generous fellowship brought us teachers together to help us not only do a better job of teaching journalism, but to help us become advocates for the incredibly important role a free press plays in our society.

We learned how to write good leads, but we also learned how to take the lead when faced with wary or unsupportive administrators – or a wary or unsupportive community. Why should we overburdened teachers fight so hard to keep a newspaper program going that only makes a bigger pile of often-thankless work for us? Because it’s right and because it’s incredibly valuable, that’s why. Because no one becomes a teacher to get rich or rule the world. People become teachers to do something altruistic – to help, to guide, to better. Oh, and having summers off is pretty good, too.

So why would a bunch of teachers give up two weeks of their much-needed summer to travel far, take classes, write papers? Maybe it goes back to the idea of being the good kind of stubborn that I mentioned in my first post. Or, maybe it relates back to the idea of fulfilling work being enjoyable. It’s probably both, along with the participants’ having that intangible quality of self-motivation.

This year I’m in the unusual position of going back to the institute as a speaker – an invitation that resulted from my MTV experience. I’ll answer questions about what it was like to be filmed for a national television program, and I’ll also talk about how I select editors each year from my perhaps-too-motivated bunch. (If you’ve seen the show, you know what I mean!)

From my end, I’m excited to meet and get to know more advisers just like me who are encountering the same struggles and joys. I’ll only be there two days this year, but that’s still enough time to make new friends and to indulge in that always-welcome feeling of fellowship.

Humor Me

You won’t want to bang your head against the wall quite so much if you remember that it’s all hysterically funny.

My preceding posts have hopefully been useful in a pragmatic, functional sort of way, but I think it’s time for a little mental health food. While we teachers have the undeniably important and mind-boggling job of cultivating young psyches in large groups, we must also keep our own psyches from fracturing to little bits. My suggestion: always remember to find the funny no matter what. The day you can’t find the funny anymore is the day you need a helmet for your head-banging date with that wall.

Teenagers will drive you insane. And I say that with the utmost affection. Some are organized; some are not. Some are loud and intimidating; some are quiet and intimidated. They will be incredibly trustworthy and reliable, except when they’re not. Or, they will always create a disaster, except when they pull it all together superbly. Yes, teenagers are people – in a moodier, bouncier version. And it is your job to produce a product – using their brainpower and muscle – for all the world to see! (Or, at least, for your little community, including the administrators who can fire you.)

I know, I know. This is sounding stressful. But really, it’s not. No one will die if your students make a mistake, and, face it, your administrator probably wouldn’t really fire you. Stop shaking your head and muttering and think about it.

So, relax a little and allow your students to know that you are human. Smile, laugh, tell them they messed something up, but it’s okay. Tell them you messed something up, but it’s okay. Don’t yell, and do keep reminding them how much fun it is to publish.

Order in pizza during deadline, play music and all sing along. Yes, gathering and reporting the news is serious business, but when one is doing fulfilling work, the experience is also rewarding and enjoyable. You have an opportunity to teach your students that the idea of work doesn’t have to create a feeling of heaviness. Accomplishing something meaningful can be fun – and life can be funny.

So, take off that crash helmet, toss your hair around in the wind a bit, release one of those long yoga-inspired exhales, raise an eyebrow and give a sideways glance at what’s going on around you. Remember why you became a teacher, and then let the funny follow you into the classroom.

Motivation Mojo

Get them to do it by letting them do it.

While it’s important to motivate journalism students with a fair and accountable grading system, it’s also true that motivation isn’t only about grading. There will always be those kids (and adults!) who say: “That’s good enough.” Or, “I’ll just take the C, no biggie.” How do you get those people to work just as hard as the self-motivated perfectionists?

Here’s one way: Let the students really, truly own the publication. Let them make the decisions (with gentle guidance). Let them solve the problems (with gentle guidance). Let them take the glory (when the going is good), and let them take the heat (when the going gets rough). In this type of setup, even the content-with-a-C student will not want to be the one to let his peers down. It’s one thing to let your teacher down – or even let yourself down – and it’s another issue entirely to fail your fellow staffers.

When a publication is run this way, a student who wants to procrastinate on a news story won’t want to make his friend the news editor look bad. And the news editor will care, because she won’t want her section to make the rest of the paper look bad. The result of this system is that everyone cares – and gets to feel very proud when there is success.

Do your best to remind the staff that editor positions mean something. Attend local, state or national scholastic press conventions to give students a bigger view of how many of their peers are involved in journalism. Throw an end-of-year awards banquet and make a big fuss. Give out plaques or other forms of recognition. Simple tools like these award status to the hard-working students. It’s their job; it’s their section; it’s their publication: they are accomplished!

As a teacher you may find it hard to step back and not just tell your students what to do. Just take a deep breath and let them go! Let them use the photo that you don’t prefer. Let them choose which story is more important and where it should go. Tell them what you think, nudge them the right way, but, in the end, let them decide. This way they know the newspaper or yearbook belongs to them. And they’ll do a good job because it reflects on them and their peers. The good students will love this freedom, and they’ll draw all of their good-student friends onto the staff right along with them. Those who goof off will wind up leaving on their own once they realize this is no place for lazy people – or, they’ll stay and stop goofing off!

You have to be content to know that the better you’re doing your job, the less your students will realize you’re doing anything at all. The most success will come when running the staff is not about you and the grade you give them but about the team and their goal as a group. So, give them guidance, give them praise, and then give them plenty of room – and watch how amazing they can be.

What a Grade Experience

Stop! Giving everyone an A is not the answer. Here’s how to quantify the unquantifiable.

Let’s face it. Grading students on a publication staff is a pain in the assessment. Writing, editing, photography, layout, graphics, advertising sales: who’s doing what when? How do you compare the person who wrote a super investigative piece on the fire alarm system with the person who created a super graphic of the baseball team’s record? It’s an intimidating process. Some teachers just give up and say: everyone on the staff gets an A. But by ditching true evaluation of work, you’re also ditching student motivation.

“Our yearbook staff is very small, and I’m the only one who does any work. No one seems to care, and it gets me and my adviser so mad!” This was a complaint I heard from a girl in middle school.

“What grades do the other kids get?” I asked her.

“Oh, everyone gets an A in yearbook,” she said.

I understood why. The teacher knows who’s not working, but how do you explain that to an angry parent in a conference? How do you show or prove that a bad grade in yearbook or newspaper class was warranted? The answer is: Make each student entirely accountable for demonstrating his or her work. It’s as easy as two forms that I use in my class.

Form 1: Weekly Self-Evaluation Log
At the end of each day, students fill in a journal-type entry describing in detail what they accomplished that day. Whether they worked before, during or after school, it all goes on the log. At the bottom of the page at the end of the week, they answer a series of yes-or-no questions that require self-reflection.

Samples:
Have I accomplished something this week?
Have I helped create a positive atmosphere?
Did I let socializing get in the way of working?

Create a set of questions that makes them think, and always emphasize that honesty is of utmost importance in all areas of class. Give them two points per day as long as they’ve used their time productively, and always write comments challenging statements that seem to be dishonest or tweaking the truth.

Form 2: End-of-Issue Point Sheet
After the issue is put to bed, it's time for the overall grade. All of the previously graded logs get stapled to this cover sheet that is a rubric of all things newspaper. Make a maximum point value for each category: writing, editing, photography, graphics, layout, ad sales, ad design, proofreading, distributing – anything that could ever possibly be done on a publication staff. This system will cause some students to wind up with, oh, a billion points. But, more importantly, the students who are lagging will see all that they have not done. They can see a concrete way to improve. But if they don’t improve, you can show their parents what is lacking. There’s nothing more effective than saying to a student with a low grade: Show me where you think you should have received points.