My take-aways

SO much. I've learned so much over the last two weeks and there it is just swirling around in my head.

It's time I work to hammer some of this stuff down.

I want sound bites that I can install in my students' heads, that they can carry around with them, that will make them think more like journalists. Super journalists, and I their super adviser.

Okay maybe not quite, but I do need to do the important work now of distilling all I've taken in here and making it my guide for the year ahead.

1. It's all about storytelling. No matter the medium, good journalists are good storytellers, and 21st century journalists need to be able to tell good stories in multi-media. 
2. First Amendment rights are sacred. I'm lucky to teach in a state that has a law to protect student free press. I want my students to know how awesome and rare this is. I pledge to do a better job teaching them about this. 
3. Three things my chiefs need to work on and revisit at the start of each school year:
1. Mission statement--my staff needs one to guide all their work. I think I'll have the chiefs determine this each year so they can really work toward their vision for the publication. 
2. Create a code of ethics for my publications, including digital manipulation. 
3. Editorial decision making process.
4. The Royal Banner needs better story ideas. I love story mapping. My students will too (well at least they will get very familiar with it). I want them to look for that human dimension to everything, something my students have always called the "Fairview focus." They need to get a bit more serious about this, though.
5. Photo slide shows: my students are not using the full capabilities of our website to showcase the photos my students take. They need to figure this out.
6. Use Vimeo instead of Youtube.
7. Beginning-of-the-year boot camp on writing. They'll all cover a speaker together and write about it and do feedback circles (institute lesson plan to come!).
8. All opinion pieces will include actual reporting from here all out. 
9. I want all staff members to be able to put together simple video. I'm thinking a beginning of the year music video contest. 
10. Move the website to a more central position in the operations of the newsroom. Teach the students why this is important (because the online world is where more readers go to get their news and they must know how to do journalism in this world!). The job of the journalist is evolving and I want my class to prepare them for that.
11. Teach my students to use social media for journalistic purposes--they will Tweet. They will Facebook more to drive readers to our website. They will learn about using social media to report, to distribute news, and to interact with their readers.
12. The rule of three. This will guide my newsroom. I have some work to do to shift things around to support that, but I like it. I will also add some new responsibilities to my two business managers: the managing editor tasks. They will be VERY good at this and it will free me up to work more closely with my students on their story ideas and writing.
13. Students will include hyperlinks in web stories as a matter of habit. 
14. I will attempt to find a way to make my students care about following copyright laws. This will start by educating them.
15. I'll meet with my principal when I get back and tell him what I've learned.
16. I will work intentionally toward diversifying my staff. It's important that student publications speak for as many community voices as possible.
17. Collect online resources for my students and then actually use them as a key component of my instruction so that my students will seek out and use great online resources to make their work better. 
18. I will obsess over AP style and strike fear into my students (maybe "fear" is too strong of a word, but I want them to get serious about it and I can do that by example).
19. I now have a start on better feedback to my students with their design. I'm so excited about this. I used to look at their work and know that either I liked it or didn't, but I never knew why exactly. Now I do. One of the roles in the rule of three choices will be to work on the staff clip book. This job will be to seek out good and bad layouts, compile them in an area of our website, and share them with the staff once a week. 
20. Assess the typography. Teach my students about this as the chiefs are putting together each year's style book. 
21. Teach the whole staff about sports writing. 
22. Keep in touch with all of you through twitter and facebook!!!