Mentor Committee
The JEA Mentor Committee: (front row) – Norma Kneese, Nick Ferentinos, Judy Robinson, Bill Flechtner; back row – Julie Dodd, Linda Barrington and Peggy Gregory. Missing from photo – Mary Anne McCloud.
Co-chairs:
- Linda Barrington, KEMPA Executive Director, Layout and Design adviser of the student newspaper at Mount Mary College, and former JEA liaison with the National Council of Teachers of English
- Julie Dodd, Professor in the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida and JEA’s liaison with scholastic press association directors
Committee Members:
- Nick Ferentinos, Coordinator of the California Scholastic Journalism Initiative Mentor Program and former instructor in the New Teacher Center’s mentoring program
- Bill Flechtner, JEA mentor in Oregon and former Associate Professor of Education at Warner Pacific College, Portland
- Peggy Gregory, Language Arts Specialist, Dysart Unified School District, Arizona
- Norma Kneese, Journalism teacher and newspaper, yearbook and photography adviser at Snake River High School, Blackfoot, Idaho, and chair of the JEA Multicultural Commission
- Mary Anne McCloud, JEA mentor in Kansas
- Judy Robinson, Digital multimedia maven. Assistant Professor, College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida
The Beginnings of the Mentoring Program
Original members of the JEA Mentoring Committee led the mentor training at the University of California/Berkeley during the Summer of 2008. The committee members (L to R) are: Julie Dodd, Steve O’Donoghue, Linda Barrington, Nick Ferentinos and Peggy Gregory. The other committee members were Candace Perkins Bowen and Norma Kneese.
The JEA Mentoring Program began in 2007 and is now in its sixth year.
With the vision of supporting new journalism teachers across the nation, the JEA Board, at its July 2007 board meeting, established a mentoring program, creating a Mentoring Committee and committing $90,000 over three years to train mentors.
By providing an ongoing support system to improve the retention rate of new journalism teachers, we hope that new advisers in this program will stay with their publications and build them into strong, effective programs that promote JEA’s goals of freedom of expression, responsible journalism, and support for diversity.
Beginnings:
The first group of JEA mentors was trained at the JEA/NSPA convention in Philadelphia, November 2007.
At the JEA/NSPA convention in Denver in April 2007, representatives of scholastic press associations discussed their concerns about the high turnover of new advisers and the impending retirement of many outstanding journalism educators.
Julie Dodd said, “We realized that the retired advisers had the expertise, the more flexible time schedule and the love of journalism to help make the mentoring program work.” So, a key part of the program is identifying and training retired journalism teachers to serve as mentors.
How it Works:
The funding provided by JEA enables the selected mentors to attend mentor training workshops at our national conventions. In the six years of the program so far, 17 states have been involved in the Mentoring Program.
The mentors are asked to:
. Participate in a training session held at a national convention.
. Use the mentoring process that they will learn during the training.
. Give a two-year commitment to the program.
. Mentor at least two mentees the first year. By the second year, they will take on one or two more mentees.
. Collect data and prepare reports to establish the effectiveness of the program. Results will be used to solicit funding for extending the program.
The JEA mentoring program is fortunate to have the financial support of Yellow Chair Foundation and more than 20 other funders.
The mentors’ support comes from both scholastic and professional press associations to provide stipends for mentors, registration fees for state conferences, free memberships, scholarships for mentees to new adviser workshops, etc.
