Margaret Sorrows is still reeling from the recent news that the Journalism Education Association named her the 2014 H.L. Hall National Yearbook Adviser of the Year.
Sorrows, 60, is the journalism adviser at Bryant High School and is a JEA-certified journalism instructor.
“It’s a big honor,” she said. “I still don’t know what to think about it.”
Sorrows said she was completely surprised by the announcement.
“I do not like to be surprised, ever,” she said with a smile.
“My birthday was Jan. 3 and we were still on Christmas break,” she said. “My group of close teacher friends gave me a surprise birthday party a week later, and then the next week, I was surprised with this national honor. That was a double surprise.”
Sorrows will be officially recognized April 18 at the Journalism Education Association/National Scholastic Press Association’s Spring National High School Journalism Convention in Denver, Colorado.
Sorrows graduated as valedictorian of Bald Knob High School in White County in 1973. She then graduated from the University of Central Arkansas in Conway in 1977 with a Bachelor of Science in Education degree in English and journalism.
“I worked for a year in the job market and thought to myself, ‘I did get a teaching degree. Why am I not using it? Maybe I should do that.’”
Her first teaching job was in 1978 at Mills High School in Little Rock.
“There was a job opening to teach English and journalism,” she said. “I said, ‘I’ll try that.’ And I haven’t stopped working since then.”
She taught at Mills for six years. By that time, she was married. It was also during this time that she received a master’s degree in journalism with a concentration in newspaper journalism from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
“My now ex-husband was a teacher at McClellan High School (also in Little Rock),” she said. “He decided to join the FBI. He did, and his first assignment was in Amarillo, Texas.”
During this time, Sorrows had her first child, a daughter, Kellie Sorrows, who is now 30 and lives in Austin, Texas, where she does visual design for the store Anthropologie.
“My ex-husband told me I could stay home with the baby if I wanted to,” Sorrows said. “I tried that, but being a stay-at-home mother was not for me.
“There was an opening for an all-journalism teacher at Tascosa High School in Amarillo. I really dug my heels in, teaching Newspaper Journalism, Journalism 1 and Yearbook Journalism.”
Sorrows said she knew nothing about yearbook journalism, as newspaper journalism had been her field of concentration.
“When you are thrust into a classroom, you have to figure it out for yourself,” she said, laughing as she reminisced. “I had good friends who I talked to on the phone about it. They sent me a lot of material. That was before cellphones and email.
“That first year was all about survival,” she said. “We stayed there for two years, and the bureau moved us again, this time to Washington, D.C.
“We decided to live in Manassas, Virginia, which is about a 30-to-40-minute commute,” she said. “I could not stay at home in D.C. Everybody has to work there.”
Sorrows said she found a job opening to teach journalism at Manassas High School.
By then, she had already had her second child, son Taylor Sorrows, who is now 28 and lives in Bentonville, where he is a data analyst for human resources at J.B. Hunt.
“I was offered the job and took it,” she said, adding that the job entailed four or five classes of English and one class in journalism.
“No newspaper,” she said. “I had two planning periods, and yearbook was an after-school activity. I had no classroom.
“I cried a lot that year,” Sorrows said. “But you have to dive in, take what you get and make the best of it. I was there four years, and by the time I left, I was teaching journalism all day long, and the yearbook was done during class time.
“However, during those four years, I decided marriage wasn’t working for me,” she said. “It’s tough being married to an FBI man. The FBI is No. 1. He had applied for Secret Service detail, which was 24 hours a day.
“We’ve remained good friends, and we have two wonderful kids,” she said. “We’ve made this work.”
Sorrows moved back to Arkansas, where she had the support of family and friends.
“I had friends tell me what a good school system Bryant had, so I moved here because of the school system,” said Sorrows, who lives in nearby Alexander.
“There just happened to be an opening for an English teacher and yearbook sponsor at Bryant High School,” she said. “No newspaper, however.
“I called the principal, and he wanted to offer me the job over the phone,” she said. “But I told him, ‘I cannot, in good conscience, take a job over the phone. I need to come see the school and talk to you in person.’”
Sorrows did just that, and she was hired. That was for the 1991-92 school year.
“I moved into a classroom in Building 2 that was piled with junk. I spent the first week cleaning it out. There was very little equipment. That was right before the industrial boom of the computer age,” she said.
“I jumped into survival mode. I had the most interesting group of kids on staff, about four or five kids. I told them if they would work with me, we could grow together,” Sorrows said.
“We found a few more kids that year and produced an OK yearbook. The next year, I wrote a grant for a newspaper,” she said. “I started it with kids in my English class. Ever since then, we have had a newspaper (first called the Bryant Buzz and now called Prospective and published about six times a year as both a printed and online publication) and [the Hornet Yearbook, published by Jostens].”
During her 36 years of teaching, Sorrows has advised 30 yearbook staffs and 36 newspaper staffs. In her 24 years at Bryant High School, she has helped the school’s journalism program grow from virtually nonexistent to having a staff of three teachers.
“Ms. Sorrows’ work ethic is second to none,” said Jay Pickering, principal at Bryant High School. “She is consistently working after hours to assure her students meet deadlines. It is my opinion that there is a direct relationship between her leadership and the department’s success.”
The Hornet Yearbook staffs have consistently won the nation’s highest yearbook honors — Crown awards from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association and Pacemaker awards from the National Scholastic Press Association. Additionally, Bryant journalism students have won more than 2,000 individual state and national awards during Sorrows’ advising tenure.
Sorrows attributes her work ethic to her parents.
A daughter of the late Jake and Dorothy Roetzel of Bald Knob, she was raised on the family farm, which remains in the family today. She has three older siblings — brothers Phil Roetzel and Buddy Roetzel and sister Nancy Hutchison, who all are retired and live in Bald Knob.
“We all had jobs on the farm,” Sorrows said. “We had cattle, chickens, pigs, rice, soybeans. We had a garden that was at least 1 acre.
“We had hard work to do every day,” she said. “If we didn’t work, we didn’t eat.
“My dad farmed 2,000 acres,” she said. “He made a good living. He never bought anything unless he could pay cash for it. He built a house and paid cash for it.
“My mother cooked three great meals a day. It was just a different time.”
Sorrows said journalism teachers have to submit portfolios to be considered for awards from the Journalism Education Association.
“About seven or eight years ago, some of my colleagues encouraged me to apply. There are several levels of awards. The first year, I was a runner-up. I submitted a few more times, and in 2007, I was named a Distinguished Yearbook Adviser,” Sorrows said.
“Three years ago, my colleagues encouraged me to submit my portfolio again. Up until then, the rubric for the award included having held an office at the national level of the Journalism Education Association. I had never done that. I never felt I could do something that would take me out of the classroom. My kids are always first for me,” she said.
“This time, the rubric did not include that requirement, so I applied again. I thought I might not ever have a chance at it again. The submission process is a lot easier now; you submit online. I worked for about two weekends on it and submitted it on Oct. 15, 2014. I never heard anything after that,” Sorrows said.
“My principal knew it in November right after the judging, but I did not know I had won until January at an in-service [day] on Jan. 19. I suspected something might be up when he asked me if I was coming to that in-service [day]. I have been known to take a mental-health day and skip those in-services. I told him, yes, that I was coming,” she said. “During the in-service [day], I had my head down, looking at some of the materials that had been distributed, and was not really paying close attention.
“Then I heard him introduce Brenda Gorsuch [of Hendersonville, North Carolina], who was the outgoing adviser of the year, and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, what’s going on?’
“I turned around, and in back of me, hiding, were members of the school board, people from Jostens, my schoolteacher friends. What a day. I still think about that day. All of the people I would have wanted to be there were there, except for my kids. It took a lot of coordination to pull that off without my knowledge.”
In addition to planning to attend the national convention in April, where she will speak, Sorrows received a personal $500 prize. Bryant High School received a $1,000 award for the journalism program, to be used to buy equipment for the yearbook classroom or to fund student scholarships to summer workshops. Jostens also gave Sorrows an iPod Air and will present her with a special ring.
“I’m sure I will be overwhelmed at that convention,” she said, noting that she will be accompanied by one of her best friends, as well as her daughter.
“I’ve gone to the national conventions for several years and have made some wonderful friends,” Sorrows said, noting that she is a frequent convention presenter and summer workshop instructor.
Sorrows is a past president of the Arkansas Scholastic Press Association and has served on judging boards for state and national organizations. She was named the Arkansas Adviser of the Year in 1984 and runner-up to the state’s Teacher of the Year in 1999.