We've made tremendous gains in the last eight years, but much of our work is completed with a healthy portion of oral tradition and history that is passed on staff to staff each year.
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| The clock's ticking... |
I know that we can rely on the SPJ documents and others, but even the 'putting our own spin on it' part of the work is weighing on me. I'm glad that my hand will be forced by the Reynolds experience, though, and with our merged high school opening in just 14 months, the clock is ticking whether I like it or not.
Time to jump in and get to work.
-Mike Simons
West HS / East HS
Corning-Painted Post NY
My staff is in the same boat: we have a strong sense of our history and our house style, but none of it is really codified anywhere, beyond a staff manual that's at least ten years old, written long before any of us got there. Not to say that it's not a good manual, but it should definitely be revisited. Now is the perfect time for my staff to work on this assignment: not only am I going to Reynolds, but nine of my students went to CSPA for the first time this past spring, and six of my students are at a J-camp program at University of Maryland this summer. I'm really looking forward to harnessing all of our ideas and energy in August and coming up with updated editorial policies.
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad to see your vulnerable side. It must be a yerd thing. I feel like I have a pretty good handle on design and photo, although there is so much still to learn. But writing and staff management are definitely a work in progress. I'm working on our staff manual and policy manual to debut this fall. I started working on them this spring as part of a class I took. I'll revisit them when I get home at the end of June. I want to have my editors from this past year to review both documents prior to school starting. I have an entirely new group coming in, so it's a good time to put policy and procedures in place.
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