Idea File Fall 2024

ASK MIKE Q A What are the best ways to train staff throughout the year? I would always look for my seniors who could train everyone all year long. Q & A

How can I teach my seniors to train the staff throughout the year? L et’s be honest: training a yearbook staff is a lot of work. But who’s responsibility is it, really? Yes, as the adviser, you need to guide your staff,

Let’s start at the beginning of the year: we went to camp, and my new editors-in-chief had a mentee they would mentor constantly. They were who I was looking at for future years – two or three years out. Seniors did the fall part of the book and juniors did the spring portion, so I was constantly training someone. I wanted my seniors working all the time, whether creating content in the fall or training in the spring. They trained the upcoming staff and told them all the ins and outs of the book, which also helped with senioritis in the spring by keeping them busy. So I buddied up my seniors with younger students for year-round training.

but one of the great byproducts of student publications is the leadership skills it develops in students. We sat down with Walsworth

system work? Q A

How does the buddy

Yearbooks National Accounts Manager and Journalism Specialist Mike Taylor, CJE, an award-winning former adviser, to talk about how

This may backfire, but I just picked people. There are personality profile tests and color profile tests you can use, like if you pair an orange person with a green person and a green person with a blue person. I do believe in them, but I also believe in saying, “You and you work together.” I am not asking you to get married or go on a date; I just need you to get the job done. If you can’t work together, we’ve got a problem. In real life, we have to work with people we don’t like sometimes. Humor and fun go a long way, so I did bonding games a lot. It might be something as simple as a Florida snowball fight, which is wadded up paper being thrown at each other with questions. I know it sounds really silly, but one of the games I would play was Duck, Duck, Goose with my seniors. They loved it, I loved it and we bonded.

your seniors can provide year-round training to your staff.