Vincent DeMiero MJE Project Reflection

Vincent DeMiero, MJE

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

The Vision

Ever since I became a member of WJEA in the late 1980s, I have either attended or taught at our state’s annual summer workshop. In fact, for many years now, I have served as the program director for the camp that attracts students and advisers from across the Pacific Northwest each summer for our intensive four-day journalism workshop. Well, back in the mid-1990s after fully understanding and appreciating the value of such an experience for myself and my students, I decided that I would like to model a scaled-down version of the camp aimed at middle school students in our district. At the time, no middle school had any kind of consistent journalism club let alone a class with the exception of a few having a yearbook club. So, it was with great enthusiasm that I first set out to create a mini-camp for these mini-journalists.

Well, at every turn, I ran into conflicts and red tape and facility scheduling issues and risk management guidelines, etc. Even though my father and I ran a very successful summer music camp for 25 years, I couldn’t believe how difficult trying to set up this little middle school camp was! Frankly, I threw in the towel. Then about two years ago, at our publication leadership retreat, I referred to the idea and several of my current students jumped on it and despite my sob story said they’d like to help me give it one more try. So, in December of 2023, we started brainstorming and investigating how we might be able to pull it off for the summer of 2024.

The Breakthrough

And then through a stroke of luck, magic happened. I was in a staff meeting one afternoon and randomly got placed in a discussion group with a colleague of mine who is in our STEM department. We were talking about ways to ensure that incoming 9th graders were prepared for high school. I mentioned that I had been involved in a program prior to COVID where we held a week-long day camp for academically at-risk 8th graders in August before they started 9th grade at our high school. It was incredibly successful and the longterm effect was that nearly 92% of those students graduated on time. Then he said, “That’s cool. We’re in the planning stages for our middle school summer STEM Camp and I’d like to hear more about what you did.”

“Wait. What?! You are holding a STEM Camp for middle school kids this summer?” I asked. And then immediately followed up with, “Would it be possible to add a journalism component to that camp?”

And, as it turned out, the answer was an absolute “YES!” In fact, the STEM folks had decided to hold essentially two camps – a morning session from 9 a.m. to noon and then an afternoon session from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. for three days in August. The natural connection then was to actually create a full-day camp with our journalism workshop mirroring the STEM session so that some kids could start their day in the morning with them and then finish the day with us and vice versa. It was a natural, and they were excited to be able to attract an even broader and more diverse group of students from our community. 

(Standard #6 – Professional Development: Knowledge & Performance. This standard is specifically addressed through building on the importance of teacher collaboration and cross-disciplinary cooperation, and by collaborating with colleagues in journalism and other disciplines for curriculum development.)

Essentially, the STEM folks had figured out how to navigate the gauntlet of issues I had previously found to be insurmountable and offered my students and me a seat at their already approved table, so to speak. It was brilliant.

The Team

The first thing I insisted upon was that we needed to maintain our philosophy of being totally student-led. So, I asked for two students – a veteran member of the program and an underclassman – to step up to be the Junior J-Camp’s student directors. Within a day or so, head photographer Efrata Solomon (class of 2025) and Lucas Barquin (class of 2026) took the lead and working with me began assembling their team of instructors and camp aides – all students in our program. I volunteered to serve as the liaison between our program and the adult STEM camp coordinators, and they set up meetings with the STEM camp’s student director. These meetings were initially held at least once a week, but became more frequent the closer we got to the end of the school year, camp registration deadlines, and other key benchmark dates.

(Standard #1A – Knowledge of Curriculum and Content/Classroom: Performance. This standard is specifically addressed by working with student leaders to develop journalism curriculum that is student centered and reflects students as continuous learners; assist these high school journalists in implementing key principles of journalism curriculum development, instruction and assessment; creating a variety of curriculum models to help frame journalism as a unique discipline and profession; and by developing a variety of age-appropriate effective instructional strategies to help students become active scholastic journalists.)

Lucas and Efrata recruited other HSM staff members who wanted to serve as instructional leads, assistants and general camp counselors. They soon locked in their team of 12 and began holding regular work sessions to prep for the camp. Based on their vision and philosophy for the camp, they decided to create three focused tracks – writing and reporting, layout and design, and photojournalism. Efrata took the lead instructional position for the photojournalism track, Lucas for the writing and reporting track, and then yearbook co-editor Charli Gilchrist headed up the layout and design track. The team and their assistants were set to go!

Marketing & Branding

In order to begin promoting the camp, we recruited a wonderful freshman artist who was part of the STEM program to submit a few sample logos that would capture the unique nature of combining a STEM camp with a journalism camp. Once she had the basic idea sketched out, our HSM design team took the lead and came up with the final logo:

Once the logo was completed, it was just a matter of getting posters, flyers, stickers and magnets made for promotional purposes, and then we established a landing page on our website that eventually included links to the district’s registration and payment portal. [ARCHIVED PAGE HERE: https://thehawkeye.org/32436/stemj-camp/stem-journalismcamp-mths/] And here’s one of the posters. This one is actually 11×17 and was distributed to every elementary and middle school in our service area – including private schools.

Additionally, members of the STEM team and our HSM students made appearances at most of the middle schools and some of the elementary schools to meet with interested students, STEM teachers and journalism advisers to make sure they knew about the program. Once our registration system was up and running through the district, the response was amazing, quick and very encouraging. The STEM camp could accommodate up to 150 students, but we made the decision to cap our enrollment at 30 per session for a maximum total of 60 students. Fortunately, we ended up with a solid 55 enrolled, which allowed us to keep a focus on student needs as well as quality of experience – especially given that this was our first time hosting a camp. That turned out to be a wise decision.

The Plan & Budget

Since this camp would be an official school event, we needed to get budget approval from our ASB and comply with our district’s guidelines and financial rules. That really wasn’t too much of an issue since the STEM folks were kind enough to help us navigate those issues. Our primary expenses were T-shirts for our campers (we shared this cost with STEM), printing and photocopying, staff meals (lunches since the staff would be required to be here from roughly 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.), snacks for the campers, and supplies such as the press passes and reporters’ notebooks, etc. Here’s the budget we proposed and had approved by the ASB.

In retrospect, we didn’t quite meet the revenue expectations, as we actually brought in $4400 in tuition when the STEM folks asked us to up our fee to $80/person. However, we did get roughly $750 in sponsorships and donations for a total revenue of $5150. Because we had some other donations – including a parent who covered the cost of the staff meals, we were able to reduce our expenses a bit. Additionally, our share of the T-shirt cost came out to $425 instead of $500, brining our actual expenses to almost exactly $1200. Therefore, our final profit from the camp ended up being a very healthy $3950.

These funds were a true boon to our organization’s budget. We also decided that those students who worked the camp could use a portion of these funds to help pay for their trip to the national convention in Philadelphia. Frankly, without the funds generated by the camp, at least three of these students would not have been able to make that trip.

The Program & Curriculum

While the marketing team was doing their work, the two student directs began plotting out their curricular approach and overall vision. I suggested that they clearly start with the end in mind – what exactly did we want these young students to leave our camp having learned, experienced, and accomplished? Their answer was pretty simple: They wanted each student to 1) Have fun, 2) Do real journalism that would be published, 3) Learn the basics of sound, ethical journalism, and 4) Get a taste of doing quality work on a deadline. This proved to be exceedingly helpful in making curricular choices. (Standard #1B – Knowledge of Curriculum and Content/Student Media: Knowledge & Performance. This standard is specifically addressed through organizing the camp course to emphasize process over product, thus allowing for continuous student learning, by sharing positive professional examples which include proper sourcing and transparency and contrast those with poorly sourced journalism to help students understand the difference and identify whether media sources are credible.) Since the STEM camp would be running concurrently nearby on campus, it was an easy and logical choice to make their program the focus of the content of our campers’ reporting. In other words, our campers would be asked to tell the story of the STEM camp. This was a natural decision for several reasons, including the fact that what the STEM camp students would be doing was exceedingly compelling, hands-on, dynamic and incredibly fun. This included everything from making and operating mini-robots, to firing off rockets. You get the idea. Not only would this make for great photo opportunities, we coordinated with the STEM lead instructors so that they built in time when our reporters could observe and interview STEM students and instructors. It became a clear win-win situation. It was about this time that the J-Camp leads came up with two ideas that definitely shaped the focus of the camp. The first was that they wanted every student to be treated not as if they were stereotypical 5th-7th graders, but rather as young adults with respect, class and seriousness. They decided that one of the first things they’d do on the first day was to make sure that every member of our camp had an official press pass, a quality personalized reporter’s notebook, and a designated work area. Those materials were designed and ordered shortly thereafter and turned out to be very powerful – especially when combined with the STEM/J-Camp T-shirt that every student received. These kids definitely looked the part! We also decided that we’d order some journalism-related stickers to use as a way to honor anything we saw in each kid that was a sign of positive growth. Kind of like stickers some football teams use that end up on players’ helmets, only ours usually ended up on the back of their press passes or on the back cover of their reporter’s notebooks.

The second idea turned out to be even more impactful. They decided that they would create a sub-publication of our newspaper and call it the “Hawkling Herald” since our publication is named “Hawkeye” as our school’s mascot is a hawk. While that wasn’t that huge of deal by itself, they also decided that the best of the “Hawkling Herald” would actually be published in the first issue of the Hawkeye in September – a publication that traditionally is distributed on the first day of school. In fact, they ultimately decided that the best of the best would be used as the color center spread of that first issue. And, as it turns out, that’s exactly what happened! We even let the camp students vote on which spread was the best.

Here are links to the spreads – including the one that became the center spread of the first issue of the Hawkeye this year.

• All the spreads created by the Junior J-Camp “Hawkling Herald” students

• Issue #1 of the 2024-2025 Hawkeye 

Next, I worked with the student directors and lead instructors to come up with a viable schedule that included provisions for equipment and facility needs that would optimize the camp experience for our students.

(Standard #4 – Knowledge of Instructional Environment: Knowledge & Performance. This included creating an atmosphere that addresses students’ needs for a sense of belonging to the school and to the larger community, and by creating classroom settings that encourage active participation in learning.)

Knowing that we were all used to working with high school aged students, I sought out advice from some of my elementary and middle school teaching colleagues in terms of pedagogy that would be optimal and appropriate for the age group. This turned out to impact our schedule quite a bit as we definitely planned shorter instructional periods, breaks and opportunities for physical movement and snacks. I’m really glad we did this because it seemed to make a huge, positive difference.

(Standard #2 – Knowledge of Learning Theory: Knowledge & Performance. Most specifically, we focused on addressing principles of effective classroom management and assessment that were age appropriate, and would create a media-rich atmosphere for students to learn both collaboratively and individually.) 

While the schedule only shows the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, of what actually went on in each of our major session tracks, I think you can get the general idea of what the camp was like for our students.

The next step turned out to be critically important, too. Once we had contact information for each registrant, we sent out a survey to learn a bit more about each student (see attached). This definitely helped us plan out how many students were interested in each of our instructional pathways, as well as helped our instructors prepare based on each student’s level of experience.

(Standard #3 – Knowledge of and Adaptation to Diverse Students: Knowledge & Performance. The focus here was ensuring that our curriculum, materials and instructional activities were appropriate for helping students to connect to, extend and enhance their unique media and communications skills development, a strong desire to base instruction on students’ strengths and build upon student differences to further journalism learning, and also to intentionally plan journalism instruction that would accommodate a wide range of learners with different learning needs and experiences.)

Finally, I worked with each instructional lead as they prepared their lessons and materials. Each of them put together Google Slide decks, handouts, and prepared work examples to help guide their students through each lesson. As you can see by the end products (the twopage spreads), their instruction turned out quite well. I would say that perhaps the most rewarding aspect of this camp for me, personally, was the fact that my students (the instructors and instructional leaders) did all of the teaching! Yes, I was there as a big, old, Italian safety net should they need one, but they truly didn’t. About the only thing they needed help with was classroom management. Fortunately, we held debriefing sessions every day and it was at that time that I was able to help them with some of those details (see the attached debrief summary). All in all, this was a very successful experience.

Next Steps

Following the week of the camp, the student directors, instructional leads and I met to do a final debrief, look over the feedback we received from students and parents and also feedback from the STEM folks. This was a positive experience and quite motivating. We decided that we definitely wanted to continue this project for the foreseeable future. So, we put together some initial plans, made some minor adjustments to our schedule and began planning for the summer of 2025!

(Standard #5 – Assessment: Knowledge & Performance. We intentionally built in time to respond effectively and constructively on an ongoing basis to students’ work, and also used assessment results to shape and revise instructional design and/or strategies.)

About Me

A veteran educator and adviser now in my 37th year, I currently serve on the board of the Washington Journalism Education Association. In addition to several committee assignments, I am the WJEA Summer Workshop program director, and also served as WJEA president from 2008 to 2012.

As an instructor and adviser at Mountlake Terrace High School since 1988, I have taught English, journalism, film, photography and several other courses in this diverse suburban community 17 miles north of Seattle. For several years I served as the teacher leader of The Discovery School – one of five small schools that at one time made up Mountlake Terrace High School – and I continue to serve on the school’s steering committee. At MTHS, I advise a highly capable and diverse staff of student journalists, where the student newspaper (Hawkeye), yearbook (TEMPO), website (TheHawkeye.org), and the members of the student staff have won hundreds of national, regional and state awards.

Since 1995, I have been a member of JEA’s Scholastic Press Rights Commission and was instrumental in seeing Washington state finally pass New Voices legislation in 2018. I served as the local organizing chair for the 1998 JEA/NSPA national convention in Seattle, and was an assistant for the spring 2005, 2012, 2017, 2021, and 2025 conventions. I have presented at more than 200 national, regional and state journalism and education conferences and I am frequently called upon as an expert in student press rights and New Voices legislation.

In terms of personal accolades, I was twice named the WJEA Adviser of the Year, have been the Edmonds School District Educator of the Year, and am a Dow Jones Newspaper Fund Distinguished Adviser. I have also been named a NSPA Pioneer Award recipient and have been honored with a JEA Medal of Merit.

I hold bachelor’s and master’s degrees in communication from the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University, and an A.A.S. degree from Edmonds Community College, where I was named a distinguished alumnus. In addition to being a longtime CJE designee, and am also a certified CTE instructor.

What I am most proud of, however, are the accomplishments of my former students – many of whom frequently return to their alma mater to give back to the journalism program. There are dozens of former students who are currently working in media/communicationsrelated fields, and dozens more who tell me they frequently call upon the skills they learned in our program in order to be successful no matter what field they’re in. Addendum Please see some photos and other additional materials from the inaugural Junior J-Camp at Mountlake Terrace High School.

Addendum

Please see some photos and other additional materials from the inaugural Junior J-Camp at Mountlake Terrace High School.