Let's join the community together for another winning season

 

August 15, 2018

Lynn L. Martin

Alva Pulbic Schools media day pictures were taken Monday at the big practice. Kat and Trey Lunn took invididuals while Desiree Malicoat handled group photos at the other end.

The Alva schools held their "media day" Monday evening at the huge practice building at Alva High School. All sorts of attractive elementary to senior football players, cheerleaders and softball players appeared with their parents and grandparents to shoot nice well-lighted pictures. Since we have a new head football coach and a new superintendent, I choose the words "join the community" so we all can focus back to positive results in the Alva schools, since there was a system-shock with the change of both the superintendent and the popular football coach.

This was the 48th year for me to personally shoot this "media day" event as Alva schools' contract photographer. About every ten years, I sit down with the school yearbook editor (usually when they've changed) and sometimes a new superintendent, and we agree on what services I will provide, such as 1,000 student yearbook images (without charge to the school); the high school senior panel; sports images for all teams and individuals; and public relations images, such as honor roll or other music/band/theater coverage.

In more recent years we've provided lots of video coverage that I do not see other schools receiving from their contract photographer. Because Alva is such a trusting community, the "access" policy to us as school contract photographer has been very open. (Quite frankly, parents with their cell phone cameras seem to have more access than we in the media. This is an issue we have discussed with the administrators.) The main struggle is to get parents to sign permission for their kid's face to be shown in any photos. (The law is the same for Facebook vs a printing press). We work closely with the building principals to not violate the FERPA law.

For example, this past May at Washington School we were able to photograph and videotape morning pre-school graduation but were not permitted to photograph and videotape afternoon preschool graduation because one parent did not want their kid depicted. (We would like to say that at three school sites last year, 100 percent of parents signed FERPA permission.)

The more recent superintendents have become increasingly aware of the need of good public relations photos submitted to the media throughout the school year. It is so much better to permit the media access to achievements of the students rather than only the stupid vandalism and troublemaking by a few students. We encourage any school employee or parents to submit photos to our newspaper for possible use. (That is a REAL problem for school administrators – how do you stop a parent from taking a cell phone photo on school ground that might include a non FERPA student.)

This joint effort to promote great student achievements has served Alva well, with the annual scholarship issue the Review-Courier publishes showing millions of dollars of awarded scholarships. We think the increasing enthusiasm in creating scholarships is in part because of the dozens of pages of positive news we publish every month for the Alva schools.

Media Day

Football coach Mike Shklar did everything possible to make this media event work. Also, a big thank you to new Superintendent Tim Argo for backing the newspaper and photo studio to get their needed photos covered. These photos go to places like the Enid newspaper, VOIP Regional magazine, and some national magazines when we are fortunate to have an outstanding student team or athlete.

We hated that the time in the media day took about two hours, with some parents saying, "Oh, I don't want this picture of my kid, so I'll skip having you take it." The school contract photographer may need those pictures when you don't. Thank you to Amy Graybill, Lindsey Ferguson, Denise Faulkner, April Graves, Jamie Rivas and Kara Hensley.

School Day Photographs

The Alva schools have provided permission for Lynn Martin Photography to shoot the routine fall school day photos about a month later than usual because of Lynn's unexpected cancer. Shooting will likely occur in October.

Lynn's Cancer

Several say they are not bored with my esophageal cancer treatment experiences. So here's the latest, and thanks for the fresh cards and letters that I allow to stack on my dining room table so I can re-read.

I had NO idea how precise the cancer chemo treatments need to be. I was supposed to receive another three days of chemo infusion beginning this Monday from a small belt-mounted pump. Didn't happen. As we were headed out of town toward Mercy chemo center in Enid to get hooked up, we learned we needed fresh blood lab results. Share Medical Center did a rush and told them my white blood count was too low. That means the killing off of good cells was too effective. So, everyone was pleased I saved two 70-mile trips because of fresh blood lab results.

 

Reader Comments(0)

 
 

Our Family of Publications Includes:

Arc
Newsgram

Powered by ROAR Online Publication Software from Lions Light Corporation
© Copyright 2024