Walsworth Elite Weekends
Join us!
Agenda
Event Locations
Registration Form
Buy Tuition Tickets
Hotel Rooms
Kansas City
Orlando
Anaheim
Fort Worth
Menu
Join us! Agenda Event Locations Registration Form Buy Tuition Tickets Hotel Rooms Kansas City Orlando Anaheim Fort Worth
Orlando

Work with the best and prepare for 2025 by attending the exclusive Elite Weekend workshop in Orlando.
 
You and a few key staff members will develop your 2025 theme package with the finest yearbook instructors.
 
Meet the instructors:
 

Jim Jordan is the former yearbook adviser at Del Campo High School in Fair Oaks, California, and now a special consultant for Walsworth Yearbooks.

He was a yearbook adviser for 35 years, and over the years the Decamhian yearbook earned numerous Pacemaker and CSPA Gold Crown honors. The Decamhian was recognized in 2022 as having earned the second-highest number of Pacemakers in NSPA’s 100 year history.

Jordan was the 1996 JEA Yearbook Adviser of the Year, and has received CSPA Gold Key, NSPA Pioneer, JEA Medal of Merit and JEA Lifetime Achievement awards. He received the Linda S. Puntney Teacher Inspiration Award in 2021.

He now shares his expertise with students and advisers at workshops and conventions across the country and leads mentorship through the Adviser Mentor Program. He was among the first to embrace desktop technology in the 1980s and apply it to yearbook, and he remains an innovator in the yearbook industry.

Be sure to check out his yearbook-focused podcast, Yearbook Chat with Jim that highlights the stories of great yearbook advisers from around the country.

Tucker Love is the journalism teacher and publications adviser at Shawnee Mission South High School in Overland Park, Kansas. Love advises the newspaper & online staff, photojournalism staff, literary magazine club and the yearbook staff. His students regularly compete in local, regional, and national contests. The yearbook, Heritage, was most recently named a 2023 NSPA Pacemaker recipient and a 2024 CSPA Gold Crown recipient. When he’s not busy teaching journalism, Love is probably looking for a cup of coffee or thinking about what plants he should buy next.
 

Gary Lundgren, is the associate director of the National Scholastic Press Association [NSPA] and manages the organization’s contests and critiques including coordinating the Pacemaker competitions. During his ten years as director of student publications at the University of Arkansas he received the CSPA Gold Key, NSPA Pioneer Award, JEA Medal of Merit and was inducted into the Scholastic Journalism Hall of Fame. In 2014 he received the ILPC Edith Fox King and the TAJE Friend of Journalism. He also served 20 years as a senior education marketing manager in the yearbook industry.

Leland Mallett CJE, teaches newspaper, yearbook and photography at Legacy High School in Mansfield, Texas. He has taught journalism for 23 years. His staff has won numerous CSPA Crowns, NSPA Pacemakers and Texas Stars. Mallett was named an NSPA Pioneer in 2022. He is also a JEA Distinguished Yearbook Adviser. He loves the art of telling stories in any media, but most of all, he loves to tell stories about his three amazing kids.

Susan Massy, who retired from Shawnee Mission Northwest High School, built a journalism empire with the school’s yearbook, news magazine and online publications. The Lair was named #1 in NSPA’s Top 100 and the Northwest Passage was listed in the Top 100 in 2020. Both have won numerous Pacemakers and Gold Crowns during her 45-year career as a journalism instructor and publications adviser. In 1999, Massy was named the National Yearbook Teacher of the Year by the Journalism Education Association.She has received the Engel Award (Kansas Journalism Teacher of the Year), NSPA’s Pioneer Award, JEA’s Medal of Merit, the Lifetime Achievement Award (2023) and CSPA’s Charles O’Malley Teaching Award (2023). Massy continues to travel nationally to work with individual staffs as well as present at state and national conventions and summer workshops. 

Sabrina Schmitz CJE is a Walsworth Yearbooks representative, key accounts specialist and the former publications adviser at J.W. Mitchell High School in Trinity, Florida. Under her leadership, The Stampede yearbook earned multiple CSPA Crowns, an NSPA Pacemaker, and was a Design of the Year Finalist. She was Teacher of the Year in 2013, was a District Teacher of the Year Finalist, and teaches at workshops and conventions nationwide. 

Lindsey Shirack, CJE advises the Lone Star yearbook at James Bowie High School in Austin, Texas. Previously, she advised yearbook, broadcast, newspaper and online at Gorzycki Middle School. No matter the medium, her passion is for helping students capture the story of the year in a way only they could. Shirack is a 2022 recipient of the ILPC Edith Fox King award

Clint Smith has taught for 18 years at Texas High School, Texarkana, where he instructs photojournalism, commercial photography and a convergent media class. Smith also co-advises the newspaper and yearbook. Before beginning his teaching career, he worked in broadcast news and television commercial production. He currently serves as past president of the Association of Texas Photography Instructors and received the Interscholastic League Press Conference Edith Fox King Award in 2019. Smith also produces The Photo Adviser podcast.

C. Dow Tate teaches journalism at Shawnee Mission East High School in Prairie Village, Kansas, and is the director of the Gloria Shields NSPA Media Workshop. In his 31 years teaching, he was inducted into the Scholastic Journalism Hall of Fame at the University of Oklahoma, named the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund’s National High School Journalism Teacher of the Year and chosen as a JEA Distinguished Adviser. His students placed in the National Scholastic Press Association’s National Photo of the Year contest 46 times, and his students’ publications consistently win the NSPA Pacemaker and the CSPA Gold Crown.

Mike Taylor, CJE, is a Key Accounts Manager with Walsworth Yearbooks. He taught yearbook, newspaper and television production at Lecanto High School, Lecanto, Florida, for 13 years, where his publications staffs won numerous awards. Taylor has been awarded the JEA Medal of Merit, CSPA Gold Key and Florida Scholastic Press Association Gold Medallion. As a well-known instructor at workshops and conventions across the country, he has consulted with countless yearbook staffs to help them realize their potential in creating journalistic yearbooks.