Shine news

If you are new to the competition and have not yet decided whether you will enter, the most important thing to do now is to get your team motivated to create. At last week’s teachers’ forum one of the strongest messages from Alan and Rosie, teachers with 7 and 1 years’ Shine experience respectively, was that once they opened the gates, the inspiration for content came rushing in.

Students already have their ideas and agendas and giving them the opportunity to communicate those ideas on a platform of their own creation is magical.

Our first Shine Teachers’ Forum via zoom took place last week and was a great success. The idea was to host a really useful meeting which offered loads of encouragement and advice to teachers new to running a student publication. Teachers Rosie and Alan, along with Anneliese, Shine event manager, hosted 9 teachers new to Shine from across the UK.

Last time I promised news on the teachers’ forums we are setting up to aid those new to the process of managing a student project. The exciting news is that we are off and running with this initiative and the first forum takes place next week. Places on the first three sessions are already fully booked, so if you haven’t yet done so, and would find it useful to talk to other teachers about how they go about organising and managing their student publication, please get in touch.

We are very pleased to have received a generous offer from QuarkXpress – all schools registering with Shine will receive a free sixth month QuarkXPress license and access to monthly webinars.

We are very pleased to have received a large number of registrations for Shine already, and I have a bit of exciting news this week! (Ok, not as exciting as a pay-rise or a term’s sabbatical), but we will be launching a series of Shine forums for groups of up to 15 teachers at a time, to offer opportunities for you to ask questions and receive advice on how to go about running a project with your pupils, how to manage it and anything else relevant to getting your school publication or broadcast entry – ready.

For those of you new to Shine, a great big welcome! We are so excited to have new schools join the competition in 2022 – with the ultimate aim of recognising and rewarding tomorrow’s journalistic and creative talent.