Karen Johnson, MJE, always knew she wanted to be a teacher and a coach. When she started college, she realized that social studies (which often seems to go hand-in-hand with coaching) wasn&apos;t really for her. It wasn&apos;t long before she switched to English, then added a journalism minor. Since then, she&apos;s been a yearbook adviser at tiny schools and at large schools. She&apos;s working on her sixth book at Kearney High School, and has helped build a strong program at the school. In addition to this interview, you can learn more about Karen on our blog. About your host, Jim Jordan: Jim Jordan is a Special Consultant for Walsworth Yearbooks. He is former yearbook adviser at Del Campo High School in Fair Oaks, California. Jim was the 1996 JEA Yearbook Adviser of the Year, and shares his expertise with students and advisers at workshops and conventions across the country. Jim is the lead mentor for Walsworth&apos;s Adviser Mentor Program.

Yearbook Chat with Jim

Adviser of Note Karen Johnson, Kearney High School, Kearney, Missouri

Bobby Hawthorne is a master storyteller and journalist. He&apos;s well known in the scholastic journalism world, and can frequently be found teaching at journalism workshops and seminars. In this episode, Hawthorne and your host, Jim Jordan, share what it takes to be a good journalist and tell a great story in your yearbook. You can find more episodes of Yearbook Chat with Jim on the Walsworth Yearbooks website. 

Bobby Hawthorne and the Writing Process

Elizabeth Luna sort of happened into graphic design, then wanted more, and now she&apos;s the yearbook adviser at a school that just won its first Pacemaker. She shared their journey over the last several years, and what it&apos;s like being the adviser of a small yearbook program.  You can read more about this Adviser of Note on our blog. 

Yearbook Adviser of Note Liz Luna, Athens Drive High School, Raleigh, North Carolina

Here it is! The official 50th episode! And what a great person to interview. Ronna Sparks-Woodward loves yearbooks. She knew while she was still in high school that she wanted to be a teacher, and specifically that she wanted to be a yearbook adviser. She has turned her passion for a yearbooks into a career, and shares the insights she&apos;s gained on this 50th episode of "Yearbook Chat with Jim." 

Adviser of Note Ronna Sparks Woodward, Liberty North High School, Liberty, Missouri

It&apos;s our 50th episode! Today, we&apos;re sharing a mini-episode to reflect on where this podcast has taken us since we launched in 2018.  Thank you to everyone who has been on this podcast journey with Jim and the Walsworth Yearbooks Podcast Network. 

Our 50th Episode

A few weeks ago, host Jim Jordan read two articles on the Walsworth Yearbooks blog about covering controversial topics in a yearbook. Those two articles were written by a father/daughter yearbook team, which sparked the idea for this episode. Jim Jordan was a yearbook adviser for 35 years, and during that time all three of his children were on his staff. So he decided to reach out to the authors of those articles, Jon and Lucy Bickell, from Eastern Lebanon County High School in Meyerstown, Pennsylvania. He also asked his friend Brit Taylor, CJE, whose daughter, Maggie, is currently the Editor-in-chief of their yearbook staff. These two dynamic duos shared what it&apos;s like to work together with a close family member, and the extra challenges they faced working to create a yearbook during a global pandemic. We hope you enjoy. 

A Family Affair

In this extra special episode, Ask Mike and Yearbook Chat with Jim team up to talk about promoting your yearbook! Hosts Mike Taylor, CJE, and Jim Jordan are joined by three members of the Walsworth marketing team, Jenica Hallman, CJE, Jimmy Gilligan and Sarah Scott. They share tips for writing press releases, ideas for promoting your yearbook, and why you want to promote your 2021 yearbook more than ever before!Listen to the episode, then share your marketing with us! Send press releases to mike.taylor@walsworth.com or jim.jordan@walsworth.com, and be sure to tag Walsworth Yearbooks in any social media promotions you post. We would love to share your work. Find us on Instagram  @walsworthyearbooks, Twitter @yearbookforever, and Facebook. 

Promote Yourself and Your Yearbook

Tiffany Kopcak was recently named JEA's H.L. Hall Yearbook Adviser of the Year Special Recognition Adviser. Her staff's 2020 yearbook was one of host Jim Jordan's favorite volumes, and they're known for their willingness to go in new directions for coverage and design. Listen in to hear more about her love of her home state Virginia and how her yearbook staff has been working through the challenges posed by the past two school years. 

JEA Special Recognition Adviser Tiffany Kopcak, Colonial Forge High School, Stafford, Virginia

Patty Gomez has led an interesting life, and it's given her a unique perspective on education. She is the yearbook adviser at Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and was recently named a JEA Rising Star for her commitment to scholastic journalism. In this interview, Patty shares a little bit about growing up in Venezuela, her work in chemistry, and why it's so important to balance STEM education with the arts. This is the second of a two-part Rising Star series. Be sure to check out host Jim Jordan's interview with Rising Star Heather Rice in the previous episode. 

Rising Star Patty Gomez, Pine Crest School, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

For the first episode of 2021, host Jim Jordan interviews JEA Rising Star Heather Rice, from One School of the Arts in Longwood, Florida. Rising Star trophies are awarded to advisers who are in their first five years of advising and have shown great dedication to scholastic journalism. Heather took over a yearbook program that had previously been run by parents, and in only five years helped bring it to an award-winning level.

Rising Star Heather Rice, One School of the Arts, Longwood, Florida

In this episode, host Jim Jordan chats with November 2020 Adviser of Note Emily Arnold. Listen to her story about how she built two different award-winning publications programs and how she is coping with in-person teaching and advising this year.

Adviser of Note Emily Arnold, Aledo High School, Aledo, Texas

On today’s episode, host Jim Jordan discusses the ways yearbook staffs continue to manage, create and sometimes even thrive in the midst of a pandemic. He spoke with five yearbook advisers from four high schools all over the country to listen to their stories about yearbook during COVID-19. Ashley Dias, Americas High School, El Paso, Texas Susan Colyer, Southside High School, Fort Smith, Arkansas Kaitlin Beaudet and Michelle Kuebler, Williamsville North High School, Williamsville, New York Hillary Currier, Tigard High School, Tigard, Oregon

Making the Best of It During the Global Pandemic

Susan McNulty became a yearbook adviser early in her career as a teacher, but budget cuts tore her away from the role. Years later, she took over the J.W. Mitchell yearbook program the same year her daughter served as editor-in-chief (the outgoing adviser had assigned the roles before McNulty took over). She took over a strong yearbook program, and books under her leadership have won recognition from all over, including the All-American from NSPA, Gold Medalist from CSPA, and All-Florida from FSPA. In this episode, McNulty and podcast host Jim Jordan discuss her career, her classroom, and the pressure of finishing a yearbook while the world grapples with the coronavirus. You can learn more in the accompanying blog post on the Walsworth Yearbooks blog!

Adviser of Note Susan McNulty, J.W. Mitchell High School, Trinity, Florida

Susan Massy has been advising yearbooks for more than 30 years, and most of that has been at her current school. Yearbooks produced under her guidance have won many awards. In this interview with Jim Jordan, Massy discusses how much she struggled her first year, what made her come back to a second year, and the one big thing that made her yearbook experience better. In this interview, she recalled how she learned that yearbooks can be a true journalistic endeavor.   In the interview, she shares how inspiring her students can be, and how much she loves watching them be creative and problem-solve.  Her big advice for fellow yearbook advisers is: “We need to learn to coach, not just manage.” You can’t have an interview in 2020 without addressing what a crazy year it’s been. Massy and Jordan discuss the ways the impactful year has affected her yearbook. When they learned that spring sports were cancelled, they replaced it with COVID-19 coverage. Watching her students juggle all the changes helped Massy identify who would be her leaders for the 2021 school year. As the staff prepares for the 2021 book, they’re having what Massy calls both “freakout moments” and “aha moments.” Massy says their biggest challenge at the moment is putting together a yearbook ladder. They’ve increased their summer coverage, and are crowdsourcing for both photos and story ideas. They’re using several different mediums to collect these from the student body.   Massy shared her predictions for the 2021 yearbook. “I think our yearbook will have more first-person stories than we’ve ever had. I think we’ll have more people writing for us or with us than we ever have. So much of the content is going to have to come from beyond the staff.” They’ll be letting preconceived notions of what a yearbook “should be” fall away, and allowing this year’s book to take a new form that works with the current situation.   

Adviser of Note Susan Massy, Shawnee Mission Northwest High School, Shawnee, Kansas

2020 has been an odd year for everyone. We&apos;ve all had to learn to navigate brand-new challenges. For Michelle Shue and her yearbook staff at Davie County High School in Mocksville, North Carolina. Like many schools around the country, they didn&apos;t have much warning when they learned they wouldn&apos;t be returning to the classroom. With their final deadline approaching, Shue and her staff buckled down and submitted half their book&apos;s pages in a two-week window!

Adviser of Note Michelle Shue – Out of the life raft and on to bridge building (as the new year begins)

Behind every yearbook is a great story, and Jim Jordan is exploring those stories. Join Jim as he interviews the people behind the yearbook in Yearbook Chat with Jim, part of the Walsworth Yearbooks Podcast Network (WYPN). From new advisers who just made it through their first year, to long-time yearbook lovers looking at retirement, Yearbook Chat with Jim shows the human side of creating a yearbook.

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Yearbook Chat with Jim

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