BISD journalism students hard at work

School may not start for more than a month, but journalism students have been hard at work this summer. Besides working to complete the high school yearbook and elementary and junior high memory books, they also attended camp in Austin last month to begin working on their publications for next year.

Nine members of the eleven-person staff traveled to Austin on the last Friday in June to attend ILPC camp. ILPC is the Interscholastic League Press Conference, which is a UIL-based journalism program. ILPC brings in some the best journalism teachers in the state and in the nation each year for camp in the summer and for the spring convention in April.

Students attended classes from 9 each morning until 9 at night, with breaks for meals. Most nights saw them with homework still to complete. All of the hard work paid off, though, when Monday's award assembly came around.

The Newspaper Packaging and Design class was attended by Morgan Anderson and Meredith Shaw. Meredith received a Certificate of Commendation for Reporting and Writing. In the Intermediate Newspaper class, Chris Negron won an award for lead writing while Michael Morelock took awards for personal features and column writing. Michael also received an award for being one of the top three students in his class.

In beginning newspaper, Kayla Ray and Kimberly Rendon each received Awards of Excellence for feature writing and opinion writing. Additionally, Kayla received an award for design. In Advanced Writing, Kelsey Fahler received an award for excellence in feature writing.

Heather Egan and Martha Zimmerman took the Beginning Yearbook class, where they received an award together for outstanding work ethic. Heather also received commendations on her headline writing, and Martha received an award for caption writing.

"I know these instructors, and they are the best around," advisor Melonie Menefee said. "I know the kids had to work hard and they were up against kids from all over the state. When instructors chase you down in a crowd to tell you how awesome your kids are, you know they are doing a great job. I'm really proud of how hard they all worked and how they all did. I know this is going to be a terrific year."