Misunderstanding

My advising philosophy is, pretty much, that my editors make the final call on shaping the publications. I'm here to contribute my opinion when needed and make sure the kids don't do something that gets us sued. There are things I want them to change, but at the end of the day, the book is not supposed to make me happy, it's supposed to make them and all umpteen billion of their peers happy. I expected to get through the year without saying "you CANNOT do that" a lot of times. I probably should've told my editors that before Tuesday's class.

That day, I planned to just turn things over the yearbook editors. The whole group didn't go to yearbook camp, so the editors needed to share the theme with the class and get feedback. And then I figured it would be good to start talking signature organization and spread ideas. So I checked roll, then basically said, "Tag, you're it."

They wanted a lot more guidance than that, and I didn't realize that until about halfway through the period. I wanted to be pretty hands-off, and they preferred a bit more of a hands-on approach. No big deal -- especially when it seems they read my mind already. (If they've already decided to make the changes to the book, I'm not really making them change their minds ...) I think as they gain more confidence in their abilities to lead throughout the year, they won't need me as much.

Meanwhile, my newspaper kids managed to put together their story ideas for the first issue with almost no help from me. This is the staff I expected to be a bit more involved with because the group is teeny-tiny. So I'm really proud of them for coming up with great ideas for the first issue -- I only needed to give a bit of input.