MULTICULTURAL

Norma Kneese, MJE
Snake River High School, Blackfoot, Idaho
kneenorm@sd52.k12.id.us

Norma Sumarnap Kneese, MJE , has taught at Snake River High School at Blackfoot, Idaho, for 19 years. She advises the yearbook and revived the newspaper after a 10-year silence. She created a Journalistic English class so students could learn journalism and receive English credit. Kneese earned her journalism endorsement, along with her CJE and MJE. She has been an Idaho Journalism Advisers Association member for the past 17 years and a board member for 15. She was chosen Idaho Journalism Teacher of the Year in 1997-98. She also received the Medal of Merit Award from JEA in 2003. She was honored as a Special Recognition Adviser by the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund in 2004. She has taught workshops for IJAA, Jostens, Kansas State, the University of Iowa, and South Dakota State, along with doing workshops for JEA conventions she has attended over the past 15 years. She was one of the original Outreach participants in 1992.  Kneese chaired the Outreach program before being elected the Multicultural Commission Chair. She chaired the committee that created the Teacher Inspiration Award. She has also written numerous articles on diversity for the Adviser Update since 2000. She helped establish the Outreach Academy in 2005.

Statement of Goals:
I would like to continue promoting cultural awareness and Understanding within each staff, state organization and JEA. I will keep working in the Multicultural Commission and the Outreach Academy to seek more advisers of color to participate in bringing students to conventions, to conduct workshops, and to become actively involved with JEA. Since attending my first JEA convention in 1992, the number of minority students and advisers at conventions has increased slowly. Since the creation of the Outreach Academy, more new advisers have been reached and introduced to JEA and the Multicultural Commission. Minority student scholarships for the conventions, and the Outreach Academy need to be promoted more extensively in each state. Multicultural diversity should become a priority within each staff, and students should be encouraged to openly discuss and write about multicultural issues in their school and community to help change attitudes. JEA and the Multicultural Commission can serve as a resource to students and advisers in fostering respect and acceptance of cultural differences. As a member of JEA and the board, I commit to implementing the goals of JEA and the Multicultural Commission in forwarding positive scholastic models for students and advisers.

Reginald Ragland, CJE
Washington, D.C.
regrag96@hotmail.com

Reginald Ragland, CJE, is a lifetime JEA member and state director of DCJEA in Washington, D.C. He has been involved in multicultural commission activities since 1992 and recently the Junior High/Middle School Commission. He is a diversity facilitator with Montgomery County Schools, Md., print media curriculum consultant with D.C. Public Schools, and, as an advocate of “early starts” in journalism, volunteers as co-adviser in each district with middle school publications. A former journalist/photographer, media relations officer and college counselor, he’s also advised middle school, military and college newspapers, taught beginning journalists at the Iowa Summer Workshops, and has coordinated numerous urban journalism workshops.

Since 1998, he’s been active at JEA conventions as a presenter, panel moderator, write-offs judge and critiqued pubs. During the 2003 DC Convention, he raised 62 additional convention-registration scholarships.

A St. Louis native, his memberships include NABJ, NAJA, NAHJ, the Newseum Teachers Advisory Council, Maryland-DC Scholastic Press Association, and Virginia Association of Journalism Teachers and Advisers.

Statement of Goals:
Competency. Inclusion. Collaboration. Responsive Activism. These are the organizational virtues I pledge to JEA membership if I am elected its Multicultural Commission Chair. These traits are essential to my goals of increasing our overall membership, offering meaningful expertise to our instructional/planning needs, and of enhancing the relevance of commission activities. With those considerations, I intend to serve JEA purposefully by:

• Ensuring all multicultural activities are fully accountable and transparent, by employing consistent benchmarks to monitor progress, thoroughness and effectiveness;
• Updating resources and building on outreach successes to better recruit — and retain — young members, particularly of color and from middle, rural and urban schools; while supporting veteran teachers seeking adviser roles;
• Expanding the commission’s national visibility with ethnic-minority media organizations, journalism advocacy groups, and HBCUs to seek partnerships that are compatible with our interests;
• Strengthening the commission structure to involve more “voices” in decision making so as become more inclusive, responsive and participatory with other commissions, the membership, and/or external requests;
• As we trek further into a high-tech future and towards becoming a majority-minority nation, I foresee challenging demands for scholastic journalism. We cannot be aloofly unprepared for potential pitfalls. Actively seeking to become a culturally relevant organization will keep us true to JEA’s mission. This would be my ultimate goal as Multicultural Commission Chair.

Stan Zoller, CJE
Rolling Meadows High School, Rolling Meadows, Ill.
sezoller@aol.com

Stan Zoller, CJE , teaches English and journalism at Rolling Meadows High School in Rolling Meadows, Ill. He also advises The Pacer, the school newspaper. He was previously at Waukegan High School where he taught English and journalism in addition to advising both the yearbook and newspaper. He is a 2003 Fellow of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, a member of the Kettle Moraine Press Association’s (KEMPA) Board of Directors, and a member of JEA and the Illinois Journalism Education Association. He is a member of JEA’s Multi-Cultural Commission and was Coordinator of the 2005 Outreach Academy at the JEA Conference in Chicago. Zoller also is co-coordinator of KEMPA’s Scholastic Journalism Conference.

Statement of Goals:
My main goal for the Multi-Cultural Commission is to expand the foundation currently in place so that its efforts enhance opportunities in scholastic journalism for both advisers and students.

To best achieve this, I believe the Multi-Cultural Commission must be proactive in:

• Enhancing the utilization of the resources available from commercial press associations such as the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) and the Newspaper Association of American (NAA).
• Maintaining a steady dialogue with colleges and universities on issues of diversity and recruitment of minority journalism students.
• Working closely with those associations that work with minority journalists including the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the Native American Journalists Association, and the Asian American Journalists Association.
• Cooperatively working with other JEA commissions, especially the Middle School/Junior High Commission. Diversification in journalism should not be seen just as a buzzword in high schools or colleges, but stressed to students at the middle- and junior-high school level who may be getting their first taste of journalism.
• Expanding, if possible, JEA-sponsored programming, similar to the Outreach Academies, to attract more minority advisers and students to JEA.