Publications, TV Productions and literary magazine students plan to attend the Florida Scholastic Press Association District 3 Workshop at the University of Central Florida today from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. A few of the 18 students who originally signed up to attend will be forced to miss the event because of circumstances arising from Hurricane Sandy, which forced the cancellation of school Friday and caused several events to be rescheduled. Sophomore Emily Dubec-Hunter, who had planned to attend, will instead be competing in the district swim meet in St. Lucie County. The meet was moved from a Friday-Saturday schedule to a Saturday-Sunday format because of the storm.
The school’s closing caused attendees to scramble with last-minute plans for the workshop.
“We usually go over our itinerary on the day before the workshop, but our Friday planning was erased when the district announced the school would be closed,” publications adviser Mark Schledorn said. “I asked my editors to set up a communications plan to ensure that everyone was in the loop. As soon as the announcement to close the schools was made — which was around 2 p.m. — my students and I had to begin shutting down the journalism lab and placing plastic trash bags over the computers and other electronic equipment in the room in case any water from the storm got into the room.”
Sophomore Adam Marzec said he still planned to represent TV productions at the workshop and TV Productions teacher Maria Sotolongo said her students already had completed their entries for the “Every Student Has a Story,” personality feature competition along with placing entries in the public service announcement and show intro are the categories.
In the “Every Student Has a Story” category students write, shoot and edit a non-fiction profile of a student from their school. For the PSA category, a public service announcement is created for the school. The show intro category requires students to produce an introduction for their school news entertainment show.
Students from eight counties in Central Florida will all be competing against each other at the workshop. In addition, seminars will be taught by journalism professional will be offered for news magazine, yearbook, literary magazine and broadcast students.
By Grace Alcock
