Shout out to our Spyglass student newspaper team—18 Upper School newspaper staffers traveled to Nashville, Tennessee, for the Journalism Education Association/National Scholastic Press Association (JEA/NSPA) National High School Journalism Convention. At this year’s conference (attended by thousands of student journalists from around the country!), Westridge students presented three different workshop sessions including:

• “How to Write a 5-Star Review” by Tekle S. J. ’27

• “Sharing the Byline: 6 Tips for Successful Co-writing” by Karalim C. ’28 and Valentina V. ’26

• “Data Journalism: How to Turn Numbers Into Stories” by Frances B. ’27, Kristin C. ’26, Rebecca L. ’27

"It was interesting to hear the perspectives of the students from all around the country," said Spyglass Editor-in-Chief Valentina V., who also attended a roundtable for student editors-in-chief. " ... [We're] very lucky to be in California because we have pretty great laws protecting student journalism, but there were a lot of different students whose papers were concerned about censorship and things like that."

Additionally, kudos to Tekle and Frances as well as Vera M. '27 for winning an NSPA individual award, which is a noteworthy win in high school media. Frances and Tekle won second place in the interactive graphic category for the Spyglass annual senior survey while Vera took fifth place in the photo slideshow category for her photo essay "Documenting the Loss of My Home After the Eaton Fire."

Go Spyglass! To read their work, click here. Be on the lookout for their next edition launching December 15.