Kathy Beers teaches photojournalism, and advises The Creek yearbook at Timber Creek High School in Fort Worth, Texas. Beers encourages her students to push the boundaries in theme and design. Her staff has won numerous state and national awards, including a “Best of the Best” in Texas and a CSPA Crown. She adores her family, dog and yearbooks (in that order). Beers treasures all of her own yearbooks, including her 8th grade one in which her crush wrote that she talked like an orange. She truly loves yearbooks and believes every kid should get one, every year.
Karen Johnson, MJE, is in her first year back advising the Lanidrac yearbook at Lawson High School, after spending the last six years at Kearney High School in Kearney, Missouri, where she advised The Clipper yearbook along with the school’s broadcasting program. Karen has advised 18 yearbooks at small and large schools in Missouri. Technology IS her friend – most of the time. She earned her EdS. in Educational Technology and loves learning new ways to make the crazy busy adviser job easier through technology. Her “kids” think she’s a magician when it comes to fixing the “spinny wheel of death” or anything in Adobe. If she gets close to their computers, she can miraculously make all their computer troubles go away…sometimes. She doesn’t want to break the news to them that she’s not that special. Her students earned Gold Medals from CSPA, an All-American from NSPA, and two CSPA Silver Crowns. Karen was named the Missouri Interscholastic Journalism Association’s 2023 Journalism Teacher of the Year. She is excited to help other advisers learn Adobe InDesign and feel confident about their technology skills.
Jim Jordan is the former yearbook adviser at Del Campo High School in Fair Oaks, California, and now a Special Consultant for Walsworth Yearbooks. Jim was JEA’s National Yearbook Adviser of the Year in 1996, and his yearbook staffs at Del Campo were frequent award winners. In 2019, he was honored by JEA with a Lifetime Achievement Award. He is also the host of the Yearbook Chat with Jim podcast on the Walsworth Yearbooks Podcast Network.
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.