Mod Maestro

I've sent a few students over the years to scholastic pre-convention workshops. One of them was here in Phoenix and the students visited the Desert Botanical Garden. They interviewed other visitors to the garden. They saw plants that wouldn't survive a March morning in Seattle and they connected a glass artist Dale Chihuly back to the Pacific Northwest. That was one of the selling points of the Maestro for me. If I could get three teens excited about cacti, glass art and people,  I was on to something.  They put together a spread in a day and our new format was born.

When I start out the year, I start a series of the history of journalism. We study ethics, the first amendment and scholastic supreme court cases before we begin to look at graphic design. When we get to graphic design, it is much too overwhelming to have a student begin an entire double page spread. We break it down to a module.

The module is broken down into the maestro concept of designer, photographer and writer  and through the work, the students learn they need to become proficient at all three. They are each responsible for a module, yet they are encouraged to photograph, interview and design together.  They often work in small groups with a student who has taken the course the previous year as their mentor. They each design a module to go in the underclassmen section. They practice interviewing, taking notes, and working as a small team to photograph shots for the modules.

When everyone does at least one, we have at least 40 to tweak, revisit and modify into pages as we move throughout the year. By working in small groups that have mentors going between groups, we limit the students who are interviewed more than once. (We also highlight on a wall when they are the final choice and it's a for sure yearbook proofed page.)  It's changed the way we delegate assignments and I didn't really realize it until I watched the video  with Buck Ryan how much we had adapted and modified to fit our program. It's working to help us learn InDesin, start small, get to know each other, stay focused and so much more.

Annie Green

Glacier Peak High School

Snohomish, WA