Student editors at AJMS have been given the opportunity to attend a journalism convention this April, in San Francisco. 

Chaperoned by teachers Carl Finer and Angelina Brede, students will spend four days in San Francisco exploring the city as well as working on improving their journalism and writing skills during their visit. Attending this convention will impact many of these students’ lives and will be very helpful in improving their life skills. 

Eduardo Teodores said, “We are going to meet new journalists there so we can see what we can use off of them to improve ours, like improving our writing skills and seeing how we can apply it to other interviews.” 

Students will get the opportunity to expand their knowledge in journalism by meeting with other journalists throughout this trip. Having this opportunity will help students with their social skills and everyday life skills.

Victor Marcellez said, “I think it’ll give me more courage to talk to people, which is very useful in investigations class because you kinda have to approach people and talk to them a lot.”

Although this could push many students to become more social and interactive with others, leaving family to go to a big city for a couple days is scary for some people, especially when it’s their first time.

According to James Garcia, “I am mostly scared of being away from my family for a long while because I’m very close to them and I’ve never been away from them for a long time.”

However, some students are just as excited to be with their friends, exploring the city, and having the opportunity to hear about other people’s experiences in journalism at the convention.

“I’m excited to hang out with my friends and listen to other people’s experiences with journalism and how it affected their lives,” says Angela Hernandez.

Field trips like this have already been done in the past, and we are excited to continue them, as well as making many more memories with our classmates. 

Last year, when the national convention was hosted by the Westin in downtown Los Angeles, Finer and Brede also took students.

Finer said about last year that “It was just really cool, students just getting to see themselves academically differently because they got to pick what they wanted to learn. It was just really cool hearing students getting excited about learning photography or the process of making videos. Taking notes and kinda just like being in that different type of environment and seeing what that’s like was really cool for both me and the students.”