Yearbook adviser Tricia Brownstein and six of her students attended the annual conference held by the Journalism Education Association (JEA), held this year in Nashville took place from Nov. 13-15.
The conference was a great opportunity for students to learn yearbook and journalism skills to help improve their publications, Brownstein said.
“A lot of these courses are student-run, so the event gave students a chance to empower themselves, and also allow them to be around a whole bunch of people their own age, and learn together,” Brownstein said.
The event was a national conference for Journalism, so students of both Journalism and Yearbook could attend, Brownstein said. The event was mainly student populated, but there were advisors there, she added.
The event was “really cool, because it’s one of the only conventions I’ve seen where it’s mostly all students, and they’re from all over the country,” Brownstein said.
There were a variety of presentations at the conference, yearbook co-editor-in-chief Allie Klaydman said. Klaydman had the opportunity of presenting twice at the conference, once with herself and once with the other editor-in-chief, she added.
“I did a presentation about professional and photo-journalistic photography, and it was more like journalistic photography,” Klaydman said. “I also did a presentation on how to build the dream yearbook team, and how we at MHS yearbook have built a collaborative group of students where we all have a great place to connect and collaborate together, and have a great environment where everyone is happy.”
The application process to present at the conference was long and tedious, Klaydman said. She had to create an online application and describe what she would present, and wait for it to be accepted, she added.
“They only want certain people to present,” Klaydman said. “So it was really scary, because I had to be like, ‘Hey, I’m this one girl from Milpitas High School, and I think I’m worthy enough to present at your conference.’”
Klaydman found the conference to be an amazing experience as she was able to present there, unlike the other conferences she had attended, she said. The conference was a collaborative space for her and other students in yearbook and journalism, she added.
“To present at Nashville in front of the entire world was so amazing,” Klaydman said. “After my photo presentation and session, people came up to me showing me their photos and asking me what they can do to get better photos and how they can fix their aperture and the graininess. I just felt so happy that I was able to help someone else get into the same field.”
Freshman yearbook student Vicky Chan attended the conference because she wanted to be more involved with her yearbook class, Chan said. She plans to take the class for all four years of high school, and believed that attending the event would teach her skills that would help improve the school’s yearbook, she added.
“Yearbook means preserving memory for students and also teachers in MHS, allowing them to remember what happened in school years when they cannot,” Chan said.
Chan learned a lot of things from the event, she said. She learned topics such as the emphasis of team building, she said.
“I learned that team building is important, and it’s important because a yearbook is basically just a huge group project, and you can’t get anything done unless people communicate well and trust each other,” Chan said. “That allows the entire book to be better, because everyone is working together instead of separately.”
Brownstein thinks that more students should attend these conferences, Brownstein said.
“It’s an opportunity to learn about a lot of different things that are related to not just yearbook and journalism stuff,” Brownstein said. “It’s a really unique opportunity.”
