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Check out the new SPRC podcast
Looking to learn more about New Voices and the First Amendment? Check out SPRC’s first in a series of podcasts that will highlight issues of importance to empower student voices.
The first installment of “Conversations at the Schoolhouse Gate” features Neha Madhira from Prosper High School (Texas) and discusses her staff’s fight through prior review and censorship.
Read MoreBrett Kavanaugh’s 1983 yearbook provides teachable moments
Yearbooks are forever.
We wear this statement on matching T-shirts, mail it home on marketing postcards and proudly display it on homemade posters created by dedicated publications staffs nationwide.
But less than one week before National Yearbook Week 2018, the phrase takes on new significance during the hearings surrounding Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Earlier this week, Kavanaugh’s 1983 Georgetown Prep yearbook page made the news for its references to drinking and partying along with coded mentions of a female classmate that appear to be demeaning inside jokes.
Seeing a yearbook page in the news is always a teachable moment, of course. Journalism teachers can show students — and other stakeholders — the value of yearbooks as historical record, as memory keepers and, depending on one’s perspective, possibly as a sort of character reference. The way people hold on to yearbooks, as Heather Schwedel describes in this Slate article, draws attention to a student publication 35 years later as a form of historical evidence.
What complicates the larger discourse is the social media noise, which quickly shifted to placing blame on the yearbook adviser and others responsible for producing the publication. A tweet by Soledad O’Brien questioned the adviser, and the comments that followed illustrate the wide range of uninformed public opinions about what should and shouldn’t find its way into a yearbook — and who plays a hand in that decision.
What can yearbook staff members learn from the 1983 Cupola?
Recent H.L. Hall National Yearbook Adviser of the Year winners share their perspectives to help add context and offer guidance for students and teachers discussing this in their journalism classes.
What is the role of the adviser?
“Advisers are responsible for helping guide staff members in understanding their responsibilities and through challenges they face. They are not there to censor or to dictate content. They are there to provide support, advice and direction. Advisers are not there to serve as editors of student publications. They are there to help students establish the standards and guide them.”
— Brenda Field, MJE; Glenbrook South High School (Glenbrook, Ill.)
“First and foremost, the role of the yearbook adviser is to teach responsible journalism. If we’re doing our jobs, then students will be equipped to make responsible decisions regarding content. And this is what happens every single day in yearbook journalism classrooms across the country. Yes, I read every word that went into the books I advised, as that was the expectation in my school and community. But it was the editors and staff who ultimately determined content.”
— Cindy Todd; retired from Westlake High School (Austin, Texas)
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A new school year, a new staff – make sure your staff is well informed
by Cyndi Hyatt
By now we all have fallen into the rhythm of another academic year. With the advent of new staffs, new ideas and maybe new procedures it’s also good to pause and reflect.
What have you done to make sure your staff, especially the rookies, is trained in more than how to write copy, conduct an interview or edit a package?
Student journalists are eager to cover what’s news but they need to be armed with the necessary tools, skills and knowledge BEFORE the story is filed.
Read MoreConstitution Day is right time
to apply for FAPFA recognition
by Lori Keekley, MJE
As advisers, we work to support student journalists on a daily basis.
Taking a moment today to apply for the First Amendment Press Freedom Award is a great way to symbolically show this support.
Read MoreStart the year strong while
promoting students’ press rights
by Lindsay Coppens
The Harbinger Adviser, Algonquin Regional High School, Northborough, Mass.
Although we may want to jump right into the business of putting out the first print issue or filling the website with killer content, 
there are steps you as an adviser can take at the beginning of the year to help your publication’s staff start strong while fostering their independence. These steps all connect with communication and establishing good relationships.
• Have a meeting with your editors-in-chief and the school principal.
It’s always a shame and usually doesn’t bode well if the first interaction between editors and administration is a negative one. Start off the year with good communication and establish a good working relationship with your school’s administration. While you may act as a facilitator at the meeting (or hopefully just sit back and listen to most of it), it would be best for the student editors, not the adviser, to contact the administrator for this meeting. This emphasizes the principal and editors should be the ones directly communicating most of the time, not the adults.
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