On Friday, October 24th, Morgan journalism students stepped out of the classroom to expand their learning, attending a Journalism conference at Southern University that allowed them to listen in on two out of nine breakout sessions from the university’s college professors.
This is the 40th year Southern University has held this event for high schools in Connecticut. Each year, the conference has a key speaker who addresses the conference in the university ballroom after the 30-minute breakout sessions are held. This year WTNH reporter, Kent Pierce, spoke on world journalism.
This may be Morgan journalism’s second time attending this field trip in the past few years, but it is not for Journalism teacher Eric Carroll. Back at Carroll’s old school, Brien McMahon, in Norwalk, he and a few of his journalism students went to a similar conference at Columbia University in New York. While the Southern trip was free for students, the Columbia trip required students to pay $100 to attend the conference from 9:30AM to 3:00PM. There, students spend more than an hour with a professor from Colombia and with university students speaking about various topics in the world of journalism.
When Carroll became a teacher here at The Morgan School, he was aware the previous journalism advisor teacher, Leslie Chausse, attended years prior with her students, but he wanted to make it a goal to attend the conference with his students when he became the new advisor in 2024. Carroll knew that the financial portion of making this conference happen was available, being paid for by the school, so he took it upon himself to sign up and bring technology instructor Alex DiStefano.
“It’s all really about team building and giving students an opportunity to see that other kids in the schools are passionate about the same topic as they are. It also gives us a chance to kind of meet up between the two journalism classes, which I really like,” said Carroll.
After attending these conferences, Carroll hoped his students felt inspired when they came back into the classroom, and brought the little things they were taught into action. Additionally, Carroll enjoyed that both journalism classes are able to combine forces and find things outside the classroom to bond. 
Many reporters here at Morgan take this opportunity as a learning experience to expand their knowledge, solely based on their strengths and weaknesses. First year journalism student, junior Gwen Madura attended the field trip this year. Madura listened in on the “Snap Crap” photography based breakout session and “Being an Editor” breakout session.
After listening in on both breakout sessions, the most interesting fact Madura learned was being able to recognize small mistakes quickly without autocorrecting them in her head and bypassing it.
One thing Madura will bring back into the classroom is the aim to look at topics she chooses to write about from a different angle. “I think looking at a different perspective is good, so I will give more to our community on what they will be interested in reading such as what events are going on here at Morgan,” said Madura.
Third year journalism reporter, Emerson Dunning, was in her second year of attending the conference. Dunning found the conference to be very intriguing this year based on the information she learned. Dunning listened in on the “Sports Journalism” session, and “How Important AI Is” breakout session. Because she is one of the sports editors for the Pawprint, she found new tips and ways to make the posts she is putting out to the audience more appealing.
Pete G, the professor speaking in Dunning’s Sports Journalism breakout session gave them powerful sports filming tips that could change the whole aspect of their video -like making sure you are filming horizontally rather than vertically, so you can get more action footage rather than just focusing on one person or object.
“‘How AI Is Important’ really caught my attention on being cautious when getting information off the internet,” said Dunning. Dunning elaborated on how hard it was to differentiate the real or fake news with how powerful AI has developed, so walking out of this breakout session she now is going to be very careful, especially when she is quoting information in her Pawprint articles.
“I would definitely go to another conference like the one at Southern University again, because I think as a journalist myself, it is interesting to see others opinions on the industry besides Mr. Carroll’s,” said Dunning.
She enjoys learning all about the industry, not just in the classroom so she would suggest to her peers about learning more about this industry and to attend conferences if they had the opportunity. “I believe that with this suggestion they would learn new things and become a better writer,” closed Dunning.
