4 advisers receive First-time Convention Grant to bring students to the national convention in Boston

The recipients are:

• Isabella Droginske, Wheeling (West Virginia) Park High School
• Ashley Mills, Kannapolis (North Carolina) Middle School
• David Rohlfing, Pace High School, New York
• Lela Siegel, Brazoswood High School, Clute, Texas

The application process asked candidates to identify what they aim to accomplish by exposing their students to the national convention.

“I want my students to be able to network with other students outside of their comfort zone and to really appreciate the full aspect of high school journalism and how it can benefit them in the future,” Siegel said. 

Mills sees her job as a balancing act and knows the grant will help her as she continues to grow her programs.

“The yearbook and the broadcast show serve distinct, and very different, roles within our school community,” she said. “Our broadcast club was formed in January of last year, and this year I am launching it as a class for the first time. My biggest challenge with it is engaging our school community. I feel like my greatest challenge, this year, will be proving the necessity of our publications and helping people to see them as a valuable, positive thing for our school.”

While the grant is open to any teacher who hasn’t previously attended a national convention, it is geared toward newer advisers and those from underserved areas, including locations where a convention is unlikely to take place.

Rohlfing restarted his school’s newspaper — after 10 years without one — two years ago through a journalism class elective. In urban New York City, he is working to balance assignments between an after school club and his elective class.

“As a new program, my students are constantly developing and learning new aspects of journalism, both in their leadership capacities and in developing systems as news writing managers,” he said. “For example, this year, we will have our first weekly editorial meetings where section editors pitch story ideas. My students are going to need a lot of help in running these meetings smoothly and effectively. The NHSJC will expose the students to all sorts of tools and tricks that they will bring back to our organization to make it run efficiently.”

As a second-year adviser, Droginske advises both the newspaper and the online news website.

“I would like to learn with my students how to improve our paper,” Droginske said. “I took over this program last year after it had died out over 10 years ago. My students are very excited to be bringing back our school newspaper and we produced eight paper publications last year and updated our site weekly. I would like to learn even more on how to be a good adviser and my students are very interested in the field of journalism and communications.”

In the weeks prior to the convention, participants will receive guidance from JEA leaders regarding how to select sessions and prepare contest entries. After the convention, students will work to present what they learned to the rest of their staff in order to implement ideas from the sessions they attended. In addition, advisers will share part of their experience with the scholastic journalism community by working with JEA Vice President Justin Daigle, MJE.

The First-time Convention Grant provides complimentary registration for advisers and two of their students, a National Student Media Contests entry for each student, adviser participation in JEA’s Outreach Academy and one NSPA publication critique for each group.