Rothavie Toum working hard in the library to make an entertaining post for the Spartans. photo by Billy Rodriguez Jr
Rothavie Toum aspires to highlight student achievements while making TJ’s social media pages more engaging and fun.
With ample events going on here at Thomas Jefferson High School, keeping up to date and finding announcements can be very hard for students to do in short amounts of time. Rothavie Toum, TJ’s school communications specialist, knows that social media has a big influence on many high schoolers, so she has three main goals with TJ’s social media. Primarily, Toum aims to make a platform that gives students credit for their accomplishments and helps them feel seen. She also wants to be noticed by the younger generation, letting them see the cool projects and events there at TJ in hopes to increase interest and enrollment. Finally, Toum hopes for each year’s graduating class to be able to look back at everything they did throughout high school, so they can be proud of all of their accomplishments and remember the fun activities they participated in throughout their journey.
Toum’s path into her position at TJ was deeply motivated by her desire to give students recognition. Her journey began at Colorado State University, where she majored in Graphic Design and minored in Information Science and Technology. Toum became a Graphic Design Creative, working in marketing at the Lory Student Center. Additionally, she was a Digital Marketing Assistant in Public Relations in CSU’s career center, where she was in charge of social media and promoting all of the marketing materials. After college, Toum was presented with ten different school jobs, and she made the decision to come to TJ. She explained that this was because of the Careers Communication Technology(CCT) program, as she saw this as her opportunity to connect with many students while highlighting TJ’s success. Toum noticed that our social media pages did not have very entertaining posts; most pages contained simply dates or some flyers. Her goal was to make social media more engaging and highlight students’ voices, as well as inform them of school events.
What makes Toum an amazing fit for her role is her passion for helping students. Despite many options, she decided to come to TJ because “I could be doing this exact same job at any corporate position but it wouldn’t be the same because at the end of the day I’m doing it for the kids.” Toum’s commitment toward making students feel seen and highlighting their achievements will motivate the community to keep going. The social media ensures that Spartans feel seen, and will achieve recognition on a school wide scale.
One of the most challenging aspects of Toum’s role is keeping up with announcements; finding out what events are happening and when. At TJ, there are countless activities happening, and some events are not put in Spartan Edition with enough heads-up. She overcomes this by staying on top of various outlets, keeping up with the individual social media pages for clubs, and touching base with staff members. Students provide a huge help, giving Toum updates on event information and making her aware of what is going on. Students can personally email Toum (rothavie_toum@dpsk12.net) or find her on Tuesdays in the library to inform her about upcoming events or student accomplishments so that students are given a spotlight for their work and successes.
Toum also wants the posts to be an archive that former students can look back on and review. She hopes they will be proud knowing that the club contributions Spartans made at school were seen, or the year they went to homecoming with all their friends was posted on social media. Actually having something to look back on is so important for many graduates to be able to reflect on their memories of what they did in high school.
Toum’s final goal is to raise enrollment here at TJ. She plans to do this by showing potential students the fun year-round events that happen. Following up on events can be very challenging, though. That is why Toum will help put out photos, updates, and more on TJ’s social media pages to ensure that nothing will be overlooked. This can lead to younger kids seeing how fun this school is, and hopefully convince them to choose TJ for their high school chapter.
Toum is a very important part of TJ’s community. She helps students achieve recognition for their hard work and accomplishments throughout the year. Toum’s commitment to creating a place that makes students feel important at school, even when they don’t see it themselves, is inspiring.
