A newscast takes a village
Or at least a team. A crew, if you will.
In CHS Wired, we achieve far less as individual journalists than we do as a team. If one of our crew has a weak story or misses a deadline, our whole episode suffers. Over my last 4 years, I have found the best way to combat this is to build a team environment. Since day 1, my goal was always to hold the position of Director as a senior, and along the way, I've gained invaluable leadership skills that prepared me for my role this year.
Team Building
Walking into a brand-new class is never easy, even down to deciding what desk to sit in. Walking fresh into CHS Wired can be intimidating, so to kick off every bootcamp, I run a few icebreakers to get a new crew more comfortable with each other. I am sure to emphasise the team nature of CHS Wired, and how we are stronger as a crew than individuals.
Bootcamp
Bootcamp is one of the single most important parts of CHS Wired. Intro students learn the ropes, Advanced students begin learning to peer-teach what they've worked on mastering over the last few Trimesters, and Producers get their first taste of true leadership. When I run a Bootcamp, I try to build a balanced structure that leaves no stone unturned, yet doesn't take half a trimester to get through. A lot of CHS Wired is learned by doing, but if students aren't shown first, we have frustrated crew members and broken equipment as a deserved consequence.
Communication and Organization
In order to work like a team, we've got to communicate like one too. I found that in past years, miscommunication or under-communication has led to confusion and animosity on staff. On year, we had 2 students tasked with creating the same opener in 2 different classes, and it caused a great deal of drama when they both found out that one of their hard work wouldn't be featured. To combat this, I've streamlined our show cycle in a way accessible to everyone.
The Remind App
Remind is a tool we use on staff to communicate and send out announcements on deadlines, updates, and more. Remind allows us to text the staff, without having everybody's phone number individually. The notifications still come through as texts, and they can respond to them, and it's all through the Remind gateway. All they have to do is text our class code to the Remind number, and they're signed up.
The "Show Flow" Doc
The Show Flow document puts absolutely everything students need into one clear document, instead of our former system of having a separate doc for leads, scripts, story assignments, and anything else we need. I found that before implementing, it was always a struggle to get staff to fill out the documents we needed, meaning Raelyn and I ended up chasing down information at the last second, backloaded with work. Now that everything is accessible and in one place, our cycle runs far smoother. The doc is long, but easy to get through. I'm sure to include hyperlinks to ensure any external resources are accessible as well.
My goal, in everything I do, is to build a team on staff.
Here's what some of the staff have to say.