IHSPA Convention
By Matthew Stefanski
Editorial
On October 21st, myself and Sam Weiler woke up way before dawn to venture to the Indiana High School Press Association (IHSPA) convention at Franklin College in Franklin, Ind.
As the representatives for one of the small schools in the organization (if not the smallest school), it’s sometimes humiliating going to conventions or workshops. However, the gasp whenever someone finds out your school only has 60 high schoolers is quite entertaining. Afterall, we are used to the size of our student body, so it really doesn’t phase us. Quite honestly, one of the most amusing parts of the convention was when we walked into the “Power for Small Schools” workshop. All of us in the room were discussing the different sizes of our student bodies. One girl acknowledged herself as being from Munster High School (MHS). If you don’t know, MHS has over 1,500 students. In my head, I was saying, “I bet my high school is the size of your English class.” Well, not quite. I’m not saying that this girl was wrong in classifying her school as a small school. I’m just stating that her perception of school varies widely from mine. Toward the end of the day, myself and that Munster staffer conversed and discussed the wide differences between our schools.
Victory Christian Academy (VCA), along with nearly one hundred other schools, is a proud member of the IHSPA. Many other newspaper and yearbook staffers from schools throughout the state of Indiana also attended the convention.
We exchanged ideas and friendly chatter with many other student journalists. We also attended different mini-sessions geared toward topics such as writing for the web, or redefining your publication.
I have been to many different journalism workshops, so this was nothing new for me. On the other hand, this was Sam’s first convention. Overall, she stated that she was pleased and found it interesting to be around hundreds of serious student journalists. We were much pleased with the convention and had a great trip to Franklin College.
We learned much information from the different mini-sessions, which we will implement in our publication. After attending the IHSPA convention, we were discussing other possible convention ideas for the spring. Perhaps J-Day at Ball State is on the horizon?
The opinions contained in this article are solely those of the writer and in no way, shape or form represent the opinions of The Victory Voice, or Victory Christian Academy.
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