The morning of Nov. 1, yearbook staff landed in the windy city of Chicago for the Journalism Education Association (JEA) convention, the largest gathering of student journalists in the country.

The convention was held for a journalistic learning experience that approximately six thousand students from around the nation attended to better their journalistic involvement.

Senior editor, Adrian Maddox said, “I felt more inspired to face my staff with better knowledge on how to lead them and how to lead them as journalists.”

Students, Kaitlyn Bailey, Adrian Maddox, Nic Myers, Alissa Perkins, and Daimontre Yancy sat in on lectures presented by award winning JEA teachers.

Bailey said, “I really liked the speakers that they had because a lot of them were teachers with very successful year books and newspapers that had placed. It was a different light than what we’re used to at battle from Mrs. Borgmeyer and hearing different sides of how to tell a story.”

Later, they broke off into contest rooms where they worked on poetry and news writing as well as digital design projects. They were expected to remain in their write-off room until their work was completed.

Myers’ project however needed to be finished prior to the work day in order to critique his own and other JEA member’s work. Myers said, “[Working on a digital design project] was really interesting. It was more real life because they gave you certain outlines you couldn’t break like a client would give you instead of an assignment.”

When the yearbook staff wasn’t sitting in lectures, attending write offs, or meeting with their yearbook company, they explored the downtown area of Chicago with their teacher Anne Borgmeyer.

“[Traveling with five teenagers] was actually a lot easier than I thought, everyone was really pleasant and kept an eye on each other.” They went shopping, visited the American Writers Museum, the Culture Center, and went sightseeing to see The Bean and the Buckingham Fountain.

The trip was a learning experience for these students who work in the journalism programs at Battle as well as the ones who will continue their journalism career after high school.