Sunday, September 14, 2008
A look back at the first full week
This week's highlights:
Stories are coming together... slowly, but surely. The staff laid out the paper as a team. Everyone chipped in to help those who had to leave for swim meets and debate meetings. It was nice to sit back and watch it work.
Parent Open House - Spokesman had more parents than any of my other classes. It's nice to have such a supportive system behind the kids.
Breaking story - So on Thursday, Sarah came to class with a breaking story tip. She and Alex followed the lead to its dead end. It was so fun to watch them get to work on an exciting lead. They went down to the main office and got to interview the principal and the associate principal right away. Sarah even got to make some phone calls to other buildings. In the end, the tip turned out to be wrong. But the experience was an awesome one on how to track down a story. And it all happened with about two hours.
What we need to work on:
Page printouts were due on Friday. While most of them were turned in, it was a little less than what I had hoped for. It's not a terrible situation. However, there are some key pieces missing on pages that don't have really good reasons for being missing. We should not be waiting for a picture of the band director. The EICs are going to talk to the staff tomorrow about the importance of page printout deadline.
Interesting tidbit:
A student, not on staff, came to me last week (I think) to ask if Spokesman would be publishing something about how everyone should make sure to register to vote. I explained that we would be happy to run an ad, however, we try not to advertise for things since that taints our credibility. He came back again on Friday. It's so hard to see a student so passionate about something that I, too, am passionate about and have to send them away disappointed. The highlight here is how my EIC has handled it. She sees that us putting in this reminder when we don't put in reminders about everything else is a conflict. I am so proud of these guys!
Next week:
Look out for our first pasteup and our first issue!
Stories are coming together... slowly, but surely. The staff laid out the paper as a team. Everyone chipped in to help those who had to leave for swim meets and debate meetings. It was nice to sit back and watch it work.
Parent Open House - Spokesman had more parents than any of my other classes. It's nice to have such a supportive system behind the kids.
Breaking story - So on Thursday, Sarah came to class with a breaking story tip. She and Alex followed the lead to its dead end. It was so fun to watch them get to work on an exciting lead. They went down to the main office and got to interview the principal and the associate principal right away. Sarah even got to make some phone calls to other buildings. In the end, the tip turned out to be wrong. But the experience was an awesome one on how to track down a story. And it all happened with about two hours.
What we need to work on:
Page printouts were due on Friday. While most of them were turned in, it was a little less than what I had hoped for. It's not a terrible situation. However, there are some key pieces missing on pages that don't have really good reasons for being missing. We should not be waiting for a picture of the band director. The EICs are going to talk to the staff tomorrow about the importance of page printout deadline.
Interesting tidbit:
A student, not on staff, came to me last week (I think) to ask if Spokesman would be publishing something about how everyone should make sure to register to vote. I explained that we would be happy to run an ad, however, we try not to advertise for things since that taints our credibility. He came back again on Friday. It's so hard to see a student so passionate about something that I, too, am passionate about and have to send them away disappointed. The highlight here is how my EIC has handled it. She sees that us putting in this reminder when we don't put in reminders about everything else is a conflict. I am so proud of these guys!
Next week:
Look out for our first pasteup and our first issue!
