Let’s give thanks for the good stuff

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash (“Give thanks — leaves)

By Candace Bowen, MJE

Lately, so much we’ve talked about are the problems. The big topics in our daily world: censorship, budget cuts, book banning … just to name a few. But, considering the time of year, perhaps it would be good to stop and give thanks for what IS working, who IS helping and the good parts of our days that make us excited about the next deadline.

Let’s start with our students. It’s easy to be thankful for that go-getter editor, the one who critiques the issues without your reminder and even make sure YOU do some things before they slip between the cracks.

But what about the two who stayed up so late their first night in Nashville, they fell asleep during the on-site contests the next day? Yes, remember and be thankful – they were the ones who paired up with the new staffers on their first interviews and showed them how to take notes and ask follow-up questions. By the next issue, those newbies were just fine on their own.

We should give thanks for parents, too – the mother who always brings a big pot of chili to work night, the dad who takes a day off work to drive a vanload to a workshop when buses are too expensive, and the couple who speaks up at the school board meeting during the discussion about cutting the cost of yearbook printing by eliminating any color.

And while we’re talking about school board meetings, we should give thanks to other members of the community – some who don’t have and never will have any children in the public schools but come to each meeting to be sure the students are the foremost concern of the board and the administrators. They also go to the polls and vote for important levies to keep the buildings in good shape and elect dedicated people to the school board.

To expand a bit more, we have national organizations run by those who keep our concerns foremost in the work every day – JEA, NSPA, CSPA, Quill and Scroll – putting together amazingly complicated conventions with sessions we want and need, contests and (even more important) critiques, so our students keep on learning.

Lori “It’s Monday, so it’s Scroll Day” Keekley of Quill and Scroll, provides us with timely topics, resources and suggestions for how to localize them for school across the country. That’s beyond a “normal” day-to-day job, but it’s a great help to advisers.

Jim Streisel has plenty to do with his own classes and award-winning publications, serves as the curriculum specialist and produces the weekly “JEA Curriculum Chat” podcast.

We should also give thanks for all the full-time teachers and advisers who are officers, committee chairs and volunteers of these organizations, starting with Val Kibler and the board of JEA. Then there’s Laura Widmer and Gary Lundgren of NSPA and Jennifer Bensko HO of CSPA. Clearly, I’m going to leave out someone, and for that I’m really sorry.

Also on the national level – and perhaps due an extra helping of thanks is the Student Press Law Center. Executive director Gary Green, assistant director Josh Moore, and the sometimes seemingly tireless Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel, who takes all our calls and responds with useful answers amazingly fast, are just about the best friends a media adviser could have. To them and their additional hard-working staff of attorneys, interns, development director and advocacy associate – have another piece of pumpkin pie!

And then we have state and regional organizations, most of them run by full-time teachers and advisers. But they still produce newsletters and curriculum material, create and oversee contests and critiques, and plan workshops and conventions. Anyone who has not done this can imagine the work this involves – for instance, taking a blank grid representing rooms and time slots and filling it with exciting, much-needed topics and knowledgeable speakers, without having two sessions on interviewing at the same time or putting a design speaker in a room without a projection set-up for her computer. It’s Rubics Cube without the colors – though I have at times color-keyed mine – it helped.

Those of us with supportive spouses and partners definitely owe each of them a big hug and THANK YOU. Understanding the importance of a late work night or a four-day trip to Nashville doesn’t come easily for everyone.

I asked a special friend, a long-time journalism teacher and adviser and, for many years, my roommate at conventions what she is most thankful for. Her response: “the unconditional support of fellow journalism educators. Even today, 25 years removed from advising a high school publication, I count fellow journalism educators among my closest friends.”  I couldn’t have said it better – or found a better way to end this blog.

Think about your close friends in this “business” and at home, and the people and organizations that help you survive. Happy Thanksgiving to all of them – and all the others I SHOULD have mentioned, but didn’t.