IHSPA Insider

By Samantha Deane, IHSPA Secretary

We have reached the time in the school year where we are writing and putting together the last issues of our newspapers…finalizing distribution plans for our spring release yearbooks…planning our end of the year banquets…all among the other things that go with preparing to wrap up the school year. However, as advisers, we know that the high school journalism grind never stops, and as we wrap up one publication cycle, we are always looking ahead to the next. Summer is a great opportunity to get things rolling for the upcoming school year, and to focus in on what we want to improve.

Journalism Camps

Camps are a great way to start preparing students for the upcoming year. During these summer intensive sessions students can work together as a staff to start planning or hone their individual skills. Below are some local universities that offer summer workshops.

• Ball State CCIM+ Summer Workshops
• IU High School Journalism Institute

Publication “Bootcamps”/Retreats

Summer is a great time to bring your staffs together to have a little fun and learn at the same time. Consider planning a time for your staff to get together and hone their skills.

Things that can be accomplished at these “bootcamps”/retreats:

1. Set goals for what you want to accomplish as both individuals and a staff for the upcoming school year.
2. Review your staff manual, and make any changes that will help your staff be successful.
3. Create/review your publications style guide.
4. Finalize your yearbook theme.
5. Hone leadership skills.
6. Do team building and get to know you activities.

Consider teaming up with other staffs in your area to bounce ideas off each other! Additionally, consider making this an overnight activity for students that is away from home, so that they don’t have the distractions of home life. The JEA Curriculum website is also an awesome resource for planning these types of activities.

Utilizing Critiques

Often as advisers we put a lot of effort into getting critiques from different organizations to help improve our publications. Unfortunately, when these critiques come in, we are in the depths of a publication cycle, and the last thing we have time to do is implement what these professionals have shared with us. Summer is a great time to go through these critiques and see what we can implement going into the upcoming school year.

Simple way to utilize critiques:

1. Have your student leadership read through the critique. Encourage them to “mark the critique” for what they find the most valuable.
2. Then have them return to the publication and mark the parts of the publication they feel can be improved based on the critique.
3. Finally, have students create an action plan for how they are going to implement these changes in their upcoming publication.

Many organizations offer publication critiques! If you have not yet considered having your students engage with critiques, this is a fantastic way for them to grow as journalists, and take your publications to the next level.

Additionally, if you are tired of just receiving critiques and want to try your hand at offering them yourself, consider completing the JEA Critique Training. This training takes 1-2 hours to complete and serves as a guide to prepare advisers for the experience of judging student media contests and critiques. Upon successful completion of the course, advisers are credentialed into the system, which includes being listed in JEA’s national judging database.

Don't have a professional critique to start from? Have your students complete a self-critique using IHSPA guidelines for excellence. The Hoosier Star critique forms for newspaper, website, broadcast and yearbook are streamlined and available online. Using the language from the forms, students can critique their own publication or identify focus areas for next year. When you receive your official Hoosier Star critique, compare how your staff's feedback aligns with the judge's rating and comments.

North Central High School's NCHS Live! is the recipient of the NSPA 2024 Innovation Pacemaker under the student leadership of Janie Akers, Heath Kizer, Patrick McPherson and Luke Routt. Tom Gayda is the adviser of NCHS Live!.

The "Dear World" and "NCHS Live! Cares" series on their Instagram page are adaptable to a wide range of platforms and topics.

From the National Scholastic Press Association website:

NCHS Live! is the converged news source informing North Central High School by delivering integrated content on the web, social media and in print. This year, NCHS Live! used social media to bring attention to important topics.

In October, NCHS Live! focused on micro-aggressions by highlighting a different student’s experience each day with 21 “Dear World” posts.

In January, NCHS Live! Cares launched a five-month series on mental health, focusing on a different topic each month with content delivered daily. Resources were provided on the website. The reporting culminated in May with a special edition of the print newspaper.

Do you have a resource, lesson, classroom space, or student-created content to share with IHSPA members? Click here to suggest something for IHSPA to highlight in a future newsletter.