First Flight’s Robin Sawyer earns JEA Lifetime Achievement recognition

Robin Sawyer, recently retired journalism adviser from First Flight High School in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, was one of 10 educators to be honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award today by the Journalism Education Association (JEA).

Sawyer advised media, including yearbook, at Manteo High School in Kill Devil Hills before moving to First Flight High when that school opened in August 2004. Both schools are Walsworth Yearbooks customers.

Sawyer was named the Dow Jones National Journalism Teacher of the Year in 2000, and was the first high school journalism teacher ever selected to serve on the Dow Jones News Fund Foundation Board. She also earned a Gold Key from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association and the Pioneer Award from the National Scholastic Press Association.

Other Lifetime Achievement winners named today were:

• Gil Chesterton, Beverly Hills High School, California
• Adrienne Hollifield, CJE, Charles D. Owen High School, Black Mountain, North Carolina
• Robert Kay, Grayslake High School District 127, Libertyville, Illinois
• Beth Lail, Statesville High School, Statesville, North Carolina
• Rhonda Moore, McCallum High School, Austin, Texas
• Susan Newell, MJE, Northridge High School, Tuscaloosa, Alabama
• Mary Patrick, CJE, Maize South Middle School, Wichita, Kansas
• George Taylor, Tamaqua Area High School, Tamaqua, Pennsylvania
• Stephen Wahlfeldt, Rocky Mountain High School, Fort Collins, Colorado

The Lifetime Achievement winners will be invited to attend the awards ceremony on Nov. 12 at the JEA/NSPA Fall National High School Journalism Convention in Indianapolis, Indiana.