Teachers Matter
Behind the Scenes at Teachers Matter .. Magazine.
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Wow! We have 50 issues of The Teachers Matter Magazine. I’m beyond excited and proud of what the TM Team has created. It started as a random thought which woke me at 5am late December, 2011. What if the learning and expertise from our Teachers Matter Conferences could continue to deliver? What if teachers could access my mentors and have more regular inspiration? I sat on the idea for three days and then spoke to my Spectrum Team. They were excited. I emailed potential contributors with my vision and ideas - every single one said, “Yes!” Then came the logistics of how to start a magazine. We knew nothing! We looked at dozens of magazines, searching for inspiration and ideas.
Celebrating 50 Issues
We flew to Auckland to meet with Lindsey Dawson, the former founding editor of More, Next and Grace magazines and asked many, many questions. We received fascinating insights from her - and then my counter-intuitive decision was to do the exact opposite! For example, high profile magazines are funded with over 40% of the pages taken up with advertising, we have less than four percent. Perfect bound magazines look really classy on a bookshelf, however stapled mags are much easier to photocopy for article sharing, which was important to us, as we supported educators and their development. Paper quality, colour versus black and white, layout design - the list of todo’s seemed endless.
