The PRESLM committee met in November at the annual Fall Conference in San Francisco to evaluate the magazines forwarded by the state leaders to be judged for the highest award honor. Only two of the four members were in attendance, namely Portia Garrett and Maria Rollins. After the six-seven hour session of evaluating the magazines, we had a brief meeting to assess our plans for upgrading the process and to attract new members to PRESLM and new school literary advisors to participate in the program. We also reviewed some of our goals for the previous year which were not achieved due to the distance between us. The only time we get to meet or to discuss matters of importance is either through e-mail or at the fall conference which doesn't really afford us a lot of time because we still want to attend workshops and other activities.

The following items were discussed and approved as future goals of PRESLM:

1) Allow state judges to inform school advisors why their
magazines were not considered for the highest award
(pointing out specifics in reference to the criteria);
2) Revise criteria used by state judges to reflect the
current trends and technological features that are
evident in student literary magazines;
3) Re-design the application for PRESLM to ignite more
interest (needed PR strategies might go a long way in
attracting more schools in establishing a student
literary magazine);
4) Award certificates to the highest award recipients;
5) Align the criteria used for judging the literary
magazines with standards and student achievement;
6) Develop a much needed 6 level performance rubric for
judging the literary magazines;
7) Establish specific guidelines for addressing nudity,
sexuality, and profanity; and
8) Present an informative and interactive workshop at a
fall conference about PRESLM as an outreach
strategy to enlighten participants about its overall
worth and value to students, teachers,and the school.

Audrey W. Hawkins, Chair