Alicia Merrifield MJE Project Reflection

Alicia Merrifield, MJE

Reflection on My Project: “The (Adviser’s) Flock”

Introduction

Looking back, well before I ever became a journalism adviser, I was a scrapbooker. I found a community of others through online message boards. Sure, I belonged to Facebook groups, but the message board direction seemed more intimate. It was a place where we shared our projects, learned new techniques and just bonded. Some of my dearest friends have come from those message boards.

Fast forward a few years when my school asked if I would be interested in taking over the yearbook. I mean, how different could that be from scrapbooking? That first year was a disaster. The staff was a club of 10 kids, they wanted their original adviser back, there was no theme, no ladder (what the heck was that?), and the very first graduating class hadn’t even taken their senior photos yet – it was October! We missed every deadline, and I truly had NO idea what I was doing. What I wouldn’t have done to have another teacher on campus going through what I was going through. I couldn’t just pop into the teacher’s lounge and commiserate with another adviser; I was basically an “island of one.”

For those who know me, I am stubborn. I was not going to let that first year get the best of me, but I still had zero help. For the most part, I spent the next two to three years surviving. I was lucky enough to find the Journalism Education Association (JEA) and even some journalism Facebook groups. Then I was asked if I wanted to start a school newspaper. After a situation with an article almost derailed us in our second year, I decided I needed more.

Again, thanks to JEA, I found Kent State University’s online master’s degree in Journalism Education. I am not going to use this as a marketing tool for the program, but it turned my advising around. It not only helped me but was just what I needed for the budding media program at my school. I was charged, I was hooked, I was a scholastic media adviser, and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. You can find my journalists’ current work at The Viking Press and @vikingmediatvs on Instagram, X and TikTok.

From there, I went on to get my Certified Journalism Educator (CJE) with JEA and became the Private Schools Rep for the Texas Association of Journalism Educators (TAJE). Turns out I love helping others avoid beginning years like I experienced, so I joined the JEA Mentoring Program as a mentor, (where I have mentored nine mentees to date) served on the committee and then became the chair of the program.

Purpose and Goals

Part of my job as the chair of the mentoring program is attempting to match our mentors with new mentees for a 2-year stint. When the program first started, mentors were paired with mentees in their state, within close proximity to each other. The pair would meet in person, the mentor could go into the classroom to observe, etc. And then, from what I can tell, two things happened: the program got bigger and the Covid-19 pandemic hit, forcing everyone to go online.

Regardless of what happened, keeping these pairings in person is almost impossible. With tools like Zoom, Teams and other digital communications, it became easier to expand the reach of the mentors. But we had to still decide whether to keep the pairings within the shared state or similar programs.

The committee decided that pairing by state makes the most sense. It allows mentors to be able to offer knowledge of state laws as they pertain to scholastic journalism and basic first year survival skills for journalism advising. While this made the most sense, it still leaves mentors concerned about their lack of knowledge if a mentee teaches a different publication or grade level than they do, ie: the mentee teaches middle school broadcast but the mentor is only at a high school and does not advise the school’s broadcast program.

We can’t all know everything about everything when it comes to scholastic advising. We each have our own unique programs and situations. This is why Shari Chumley, CJE, and I came together to come up with a solution. We needed a toolbox for mentors and mentees to utilize when the mentor wants to help, but needs that extra guidance. After tons of texts, calls and Zoom meetings, we had a solution.

Alicia Merrifield, MJE working with a yearbook editor Maddie Tautfest at The Village School in Houston, Texas
Image Credit – Photo by Maria Filipe, The Village School (Houston, Texas) 

Process

Before I get too far, I have to connect the dots. I became a mentor and, in turn, the mentoring chair while I was still in grad school. I think those two major events combined with my passion for helping keep new advisers in the classroom, it was only natural that my grad project evolved into The Flock. 

The Flock is an online message board for scholastic journalism advisers to come together, to create a community, and to find a place where they can do more than survive. When you can’t walk down the hall to the teacher’s lounge to have content-specific conversations, you can login to The Flock. You can find the research that supports this in my paper, “Social Connections: Understanding How Social Media Can be Used as Professional Development for Journalism Advisers“

The website has been all but dormant since graduation, waiting for me to put some life back into it. I kept paying for the domain name because I knew at some point an opportunity would arise where I would be able to do that. That opportunity came at the JEA Spring Convention in Kansas City. Chumley and I were gathering and sorting all of the information from the mentoring session – where mentors attending the convention come together to talk about successes, concerns and needs as mentors.

What started as a conversation on how to help mentors became the inception of a toolbox of sorts for the mentoring program. But we couldn’t decide how it would look and how to deliver this to our mentoring community. We wanted it to be a living/breathing process/project that would be easily accessible. 

I showed Chumley my website and how similar communities helped me grow my craft of scrapbooking years back and shared my Kent State research. We brainstormed how this would help our community and relieve some of the frustrations and complications that were expressed. Could this be the “vehicle” to make our toolbox an active resource?

Together we brought the original website down to the bare bones and worked on what we considered priorities for the program. We studied the JEA Standards and reflections from the Boston and Kansas City mentoring round table sessions to support these priorities

Together, Shari and I created a list of both forum and blog posts that we would like to include and began filling up the different forums to start bringing the website to life. Some examples of these are a post about Viking Media’s Policy Manual, fun activities to do for Team Bonding, a breakdown of the JEA Standards and even places to brag about accomplishments and to check in on a daily basis to make sure advisers know that they are not alone in this crazy, amazing job. We have scheduled future blog posts, and I kept one of the original ones on how we created our Private School Publications Handbook mentioned above.

When the JEA Philadelphia convention came around, we introduced our concept at the mentoring meeting. The mentors in attendance responded positively to the idea of the website and offered suggestions and asked when it would be available. At this point, we let them know that it was our Master Journalism Educator (MJE) project and that we would begin testing it after the convention.

We initially invited the 110 current mentors to beta test the site, join the community and offer any concerns and criticisms that they might have. In January, we opened up the site to all of the “Year One” mentees for the Fall 2024 and Spring 2025 cohort. 

Challenges and Solutions

My expectations were set high, and I knew that the membership would blow up. Why wouldn’t all mentors and mentees be as excited about The Flock as Chumley and I are? I wouldn’t say it has been a bust, but it has been slower than I initially had hoped. With a growing list of 82 members, we have had a pretty good start, but we are struggling to get people to interact and share their knowledge and resources.

We have decided to increase marketing JEA’s Mentoring Program on different avenues of Social Media to mainly increase the number of mentors we have available and are working with the JEA staff, Amber James and Davonte Longmire, to make that happen. We are hoping that including The Flock as a resource to mentors and mentees will be an incentive to sign up for the program. 

That is another challenge, we are noticing that while our site is not as active as we want, different communities on Social Media are bustling. How do we compete with Facebook groups like Journalism Teachers and others that have sustained the test of time? But Facebook is Facebook, it has its good days/posts and bad days/posts. One of the things I struggle with when visiting some of the smaller groups is knowing where a resource came from and who the originator of the resource is. I am all about sharing as long as it is communicated who the original author is. How do we pull advisers away from a location they visit regularly as part of their daily lives? 

JEA also has its very own email listserv already in place where members can ask for and share resources; however, it is a bit clunky if you need to share something that isn’t a link, and you wind up with many “me too” emails if someone requests a specific type of resource. The setup of the forums on The Flock makes it easier to share images, files and links within their categorized posts. And the archives, while searchable, are not easy to check. Many times I have not been able to find topics or resources I think I remember reading in emails. The Flock is a great combination of the best of Facebook and the JEA Listserv. 

JEA has an amazing resource in its curriculum created for and by its members. This curriculum is only available to members and is behind the membership paywall. The Flock is currently only open to members of the JEA Mentoring Program, therefore all visitors to the site are official JEA Members. This allows for an amazing opportunity for The Flock advisers to share how they are currently using and adjusting the curriculum without concern about copyright infringement.

Impact and Takeaways

While it has been a slow start to a growing membership, I strongly feel that it will continue to grow as we market and advertise the mentoring program and the website. 

Carrie Rapp, CJE, is a mentor and has had access to the website through our MJE Project Cohort on Moodle. She was able to spend some time in the forums and said, “I am a new mentor as of the fall semester, and I can definitely see myself using this to either provide resources for other mentees or finding resources for my mentee in areas that I am less familiar with” Rapp said.

Randi Stones, CJE, a Kansas adviser, a new mentor and previous mentee, gained access to the site this spring after she completed the mentor training. She will be starting her very first cohort next month. “As a mentor, I can say that it is a very useful place for new advisers-lots of ideas, wisdom, and a safe place to ask questions without getting the negativity you find on social media,” Stones said. 

Stones came across the “Flush and Fly” post and was excited to find an activity in the “Sanity Check” forum that she can adjust to her middle schoolers. 

Conclusion

Overall, the site can use some tweaking and growing, but it will become a strong resource for the mentoring community. I have two middle school mentees in Oklahoma who are now in their second year of the mentoring program. They both have yearbook programs, but one is starting a broadcast program. For me, that is three strikes, I am not well-versed in Oklahoma scholastic journalism laws, middle school advising or broadcast. However, either they can post on the site or I can ask for help in these areas. It has the potential for a win-win for both mentor and mentee. 

We will continue to push The Flock as a resource for the mentoring program to help it grow to a community where advisers can share resources, collaborate with other advisers and feel like they have a “teacher’s lounge” to connect with peers. A place where a new adviser will no longer feel like they are on an island of one. 

I have noticed over the twelve or so years that I have been a member of JEA, that the participation in the Listserv is not as active as it was before. That Listserv was a guiding force in the growth of my program. I think that members either do not know about it or do not realize what a valuable resource it is. That being said, eventually, it would be great if The Flock could be a resource for all JEA members, as either a “colleague” to the Listserv or possibly an “upgrade” to it.

Standards

Engaging with the forums on The Flock allows members to share resources in all areas of scholastic journalism. Mentors can share their knowledge and experience in a publications classroom while mentees can request and/or take the resources needed for their programs. Spending time within the JEA Standards, I truly feel like participating in The Flock community meets every JEA Standard. Chumley breaks these down in a pinned post in the Class Management forum.

Here are some example posts that have been posted  within the forums or blogs that represent one or more of the JEA standards!  

Standard #1A – Knowledge of Curriculum and Content/Classroom “A variety of curriculum models to help frame journalism as a unique discipline and profession.” How Do you use the JEA Curriculum invites members to talk about the JEA curriculum, how valuable it is, and how to adjust it to multiple needs all behind the safety of the JEA Paywall. The Class Management forum allows for a full range of topics related to Curriculum and Content in the Classroom.

Standard #1B – Knowledge of Curriculum and Content/Student Media “Law and ethics as they relate to scholastic media and their importance in practice.” A blog post was published on how Merrifield and her program decided there was a need and then created a policy handbook in Creating a Private School Policy Manual on the Blog section of the site. This post was originally posted for the Kent State project, but we feel it is still beneficial to the mentoring program.

Standard #2 – Knowledge of Learning Theory “Rights and responsibilities within a journalism education environment.” An example of this would be Creating a Mission Statement in the Law & Ethics Forum

Standard #3 – Knowledge of and Adaptation to Diverse Students “Learning theories and how they relate to individual students’ diverse backgrounds and learning styles.” The Blog post Ms. Chumley’s No Good Very Bad Year addresses how Chumley dealt with the vast differences in her students as they pertained to personalities and abilities. 

Standard #4 – Knowledge of Instructional Environment “Atmospheres that address students’ needs for a sense of belonging to the school and to the larger community.” New Year Bonding is just one example of how Merrifield’s staff came back together in the new semester to prepare for the intense nine weeks before their final deadline in yearbook. The Team Building Forum will house multiple posts as we build the forums and most likely the most fun you will have advising.

Standard #5 – Assessment “Multiple assessment strategies for reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing, designing and producing.” Quick and Easy Sub Plans is one example that Chumley shares about how she keeps easy assignments when she needs a formative assessment to satisfy grading requirements or fill sub plans. Varying Coursework In-class is a great post showing a new teacher reaching out for help in finding ways to help his students stay motivated. The response from Mark Webber suggests that the teacher utilize assessments as a way to promote growth and improvement.  

Standard #6 – Professional Development We both feel that the entire forum can be used as a form of professional development and covers all aspects of this standard.