by Peggy Gregory
JEA Mentoring Committee
“Watch your back” took on a much more pleasant connotation for me recently.
As I was sorting through piles of books and saved memorabilia in a cupboard of my spare bedroom in preparation for new bookshelves to be moved in, I came across an old set of C:JETs (JEA’s journal — Communication: Journalism Education Today) in which I had published some articles.
But one in particular made me smile. In the 1978 Spring issue on the other side of my article, titled “Using School Resources,” was an article by committee co-chair Julie Dodd, titled “Tying Publications Into the Real World.” At that point Julie was the newspaper adviser at Tates Creek High School in Lexington, Ky. As you would expect, her article was full of good ideas which would be apropos even now – 33 years later! And, when I had written my article, I was the newspaper adviser at Greenway High School in Phoenix.
What was so wonderful about the discovery, of course, is that all these years later, a woman I did not know in 1978 is now a colleague and friend. Aren’t we lucky to be a part of this program?
Editor’s note:
Gregory was the founding adviser of the newspaper at Greenway High School and advised it for 35 years. She now is the Language Arts Specialist at Dysart Unified School District in Surprise, Ariz. Dodd now is a professor in the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida, Gainesville. Both are members of the JEA Mentoring Committee.