Dr. Jane Blystone has been a vital member of PSPA since 1983. She has helped with all aspects of PSPA, including presiding over the association on five separate occasions. She’s also an active member of the Journalism Education Association Certification Commission and the JEA Scholastic Press Rights Commission. The Pennsylvania Student Journalist of the Year award was named for Dr. Blystone in 2011. Dr. Blystone tweets at @worddoct
Every year of teaching I have set goals for myself and for my students. It has been true for 44 years. Goal setting helps us navigate the path we see before us.
As I embark on retirement, I continue to set goals. This time, my goal is to serve JEA and PSPA as a trained mentor for new publications advisers right here in this great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, home to the oldest school press association in the country. To accomplish this goal, I spent four days at the summer Journalism Education Adviser Institute in Las Vegas in July.
One of the big takeaways from the JEA Adviser Institute is the power of collaboration. Both in the Adviser Institute and the mentor training, we spent considerable time engaging in collaborative strategies for teaching and mentoring. As I think back on advising, I know that the best times in teaching were those where students collaborated with peers and this teacher to create something bigger and better than we each could do alone.