by Linda Barrington
JEA Mentoring Committee co-chair
I am a teacher. I sell my students the tools to read, write, and express themselves and to understand others and the universe. Yes, I sell them on the value of English, journalism, and speech in their lives.
I am also a believer in the Journalism Education Association’s Mentor Program. But the people who need the program may not know about it, and I think we need to sell them on its value. The mentors agree.
At last fall’s Mentor Forum in Kansas City and then again at this spring’s forum in Anaheim, the mentors repeated this loud and clear: Let’s get a brochure to help sell potential mentees and their principals on the value of the Mentor Program.
With mentor suggestions in hand, I put myself in the place of these new teachers and their principals and thought about what would convince me that this program will make a difference to my teaching, my students and their publications.
Several drafts emerged as the JEA Mentoring Committee members gave suggestions and mentors provided feedback. By the end of May we were satisfied and pleased with the final version of the JEA Mentoring Program brochure — mentor_brochure
All of the JEA mentors, committee members, retired JEA mentors and the people at JEA headquarters now have copies of the brochure to use to promote the program wherever needed. We will next send a copy of the brochure to all our funders.
Mentors, keep in mind your state or regional press association conferences or workshops where you can hand them out so more people become aware of the program.
The brochure really sells what the JEA Mentoring Program is doing for the next generation of journalism teachers — helping create education leaders who are effective in teaching communications skills and promoting informed and engaged citizens.
With better awareness of the program, people in more states — beyond the 16 currently participating in the program — may want to join the program.
Soon-to-be-retired high school journalism teachers may start thinking about becoming mentors themselves upon retirement.
Use the brochure to get the word out.
Editor’s note: You can download the brochure by clicking on the brochure link in the blog post. We encourage you to forward the PDF of the brochure or print the brochure for use in promoting the program.