This is my farewell to my beloved high school Journalism career. Although I must depart, I wish you all the best of luck with all of your future endeavors. We have grown from a sprout and are now branching out to become a fruitful tree.

While we may be progressing; however, there is always room for improvement. What kind of editor would I be without leaving you all with a game plan?

Like many of us I grew with our Journalism and other Multimedia Academy programs. They actually helped me grow. I have also observed them while growing.

We as a whole need to change the way we think about our school’s GroveWatch online student newspaper, our Forecast literary and arts magazine and social media pages.

We need to think of them as our own and evolve them into what we like. If they become what we like as a whole, others are sure to recognize that.

I am sure each and every one of us has a website we love to visit, a personal social media account, or your own website. Each day you visit this you are shaping it into something you enjoy or that is sentimental to you.

The school’s online newspaper, magazine and social media pages are yours. Take them personally, just as you do your personal accounts.

Also, technology is forever evolving. During the Palm Beach Post High School Journalism Awards program last month, I remember someone saying that a school’s social media pages won because they used different apps.

New apps are being made every day. We need to take advantage and incorporate them into our newspaper site, social media pages, even the magazine.

For example, I am sure everyone knows what a screenshot is, an image of a display on your device’s screen. When we post things on Instagram we can screenshot, save our Snapchat stories and add them to our newspaper site.

Another idea I had is Flipagram of the day. In case anyone didn’t know, Flipagram is an app to create video stories with your photos, video clips and favorite music.

But coming up with ideas is the easy part of this process. Consistency is not.

Consistency is very important because it forms your reputation. The problem with us is that we didn’t stay the course to achieve the objective. Consistency is also important because a lot of times we’ll adopt an idea or initiative and end it before it goes anywhere.

Leadership and consistency go hand and hand. We need consistent leaders because when developing a team you have to understand your attention to what you do way more than what you say.

Consistency in your leadership serves as a model for how the team will behave.  If you treat a project as unimportant, you shouldn’t be surprised when your team does the same.

In all, I am very confident that we’ll pull it together and become one of the best in the nation.