Three Bronx River News staff members attended a national journalism convention in Nashville in November. With more than 5,000 attendees from 46 states and eight countries, the JEA/NSPA convention proved to be the biggest one since the Covid pandemic.
Zoe Reyes, Jomayra Amparo and Md Ferdous flew from LaGuardia Airport to Nashville International Airport along with their advisor Deborah Porterfield on the morning of Nov. 13 to participate in the convention through Nov. 16. They traveled with students and advisors from two other New York City schools, Thomas A. Edison CTE High School and the Urban Assembly School for Applied Math and Science.
Below, Md and Zoe share their perspectives on the trip.
Md Ferdous: Enjoying new experiences
The convention took place at Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center, which covers 172 acres of land. While walking around the grounds, which includes a river boat tour, a botanical garden and ice skating, I marveled at how the massive hotel resembled a cruise ship. The lighting and decorations for Christmas made the environment more holiday-like. One of our chaperones compared staying in the hotel to living inside a Hallmark greeting card.
I had never traveled out of New York state by myself. What I discovered is that traveling made me more social. Every time new people approached me, I tried to talk to them. The trade show led me to talk to college presenters from other states and cities.
Because we traveled with two other NYC high schools, we shared rooms with students from those schools. Although I was initially nervous about sharing a room with strangers, it turned out to be an amazing experience. When the conference ended each day, my roommates and I worked on our college applications and essays. And we also had fun watching movies and shows together.
Spending each day with people I had just met taught me adaptation. After meeting and talking to three students from Queens, I felt myself out of my comfort zone, which made for memorable moments.
When we visited the hotel gym, I talked to people from Michigan and shared our thoughts. On this trip, I spoke to as many people as possible to feel comfortable and not sad for being so far from my parents.
During the conference, I also had a chance to meet with a professional photographer, Mark Humphrey, a former Associated Press photographer. We discussed many different aspects of photojournalism. Talking to him was amazing as he dived into deeper thoughts necessary to capture visual objects.
Zoe Reyes: Collecting freebies, new friends
When we arrived on Thursday afternoon, our rooms weren’t yet ready so we explored the hotel grounds. We also visited a trade show where we talked to representatives from colleges and media companies — and collected fun freebies, such as plastic cowboy hats, stickers and the ever-handy reporter’s notebooks.
We talked to representatives from different colleges at the trade show. The colleges offered collectibles that students could gather by visiting different booths, but also they conducted a raffle that you could participate in once you got stamps from speaking to eight different college representatives, so Jomayra and I spent two days trying to get those stamps because we really wanted a dog plushie from one of the prize baskets. Spoiler: we didn’t win.
Besides Jomayra and Md, students from two other NYC schools traveled with us. I shared a room with Jomayra and a girl I didn’t know from one of those schools, but it ended up being a great experience because she was so funny and we spent a lot of time going on errands and laughing. Not only her, but Md’s roommates were super funny as well.
We all got close pretty quickly; after the first day we had already agreed to try and match our convention schedules together for the next few days. Even though I only knew most of them for four days, we bonded so quickly it felt like I had known them for years.
A scary part of my trip was presenting a session with Press Pass NYC, a non-profit that supports scholastic journalism in New York City. Our presentation focused on recruiting news staff, so the target audience was mostly adult advisors. Shockingly, a lot of editors my age showed up too.
By Saturday, the day of the presentation, I was comfortable being in the crowd and taking notes from the speakers. Public speaking isn’t usually an issue for me, but something about talking in a state I’ve never been in made me nervous. Although there isn’t a logical reasoning behind it, New York crowds seem less stressful.
I started off the presentation managing the slides, but eventually I started speaking and explaining the slides. During the presentation, I tried to make eye contact with friends to ground myself, but it honestly made me more nervous because I felt like I had to impress them. I stumbled, stuttered and spoke too fast, but after it was over I felt like I did a decent job. My friends and fellow presenters congratulated me, praising me even though I didn’t feel like it was deserved. I was just relieved it was over and I didn’t embarrass myself in front of a crowd.
Winding down was the best part of the day; usually after 5 p.m. we had the rest of the day to ourselves and an entire resort to explore. So once everyone rested after working and socializing all day, we walked around the multiple floors. There was a pool, gym, food courts and lots of beautiful scenery to see. Although we complained a lot about not being able to go in the pool, it probably wasn’t even as fun as going to the gym together and then eating Cinnabons to undo all of our gym progress in that same hour.
The food court became our regular spot, where we’d stock up on milkshakes and sweets for the night and hang out during the day. Clearly, our common interest that brought us together was food.
On Saturday, our advisors took us to downtown Nashville. It reminded me of Times Square with the bright flashing lights. The main difference? Instead of honking horns, we heard live country music blaring from most everywhere. At times, the experience proved overstimulating because there were so many sights to see. Not to mention the southern food – barbecue, fried catfish, banana pudding and hot chicken, proved tempting, and at times, amazing.
This was my first time being away from my parents for longer than two days. I didn’t get homesick too often, but some nights that feeling hit me. I’d walk into my hotel room forgetting that it wasn’t my room, and I was greeted by my roommates’ faces instead of my parents, which was hard to get used to.
One moment that stuck with me was during the college fair. At one of the booths, Jomayra and I talked to someone who gave us a map and told us to mark where we were from. However, New York wasn’t on their map because they didn’t plan for students outside of Southern states.
I stepped back and analyzed the board, which was crowded with dozens of red markers in all the Southern states, and had maybe four markers on different corners of the map to compensate for the states/countries they forgot to include.
That made me take a good look at my surroundings, and I realized that everyone looked so different from me, and we all came from clearly different backgrounds. I thought that was supposed to make me scared, but instead I got excited.
After that, we went to more booths than we needed to and I socialized with as many college representatives and aspiring journalists as I could. Even professional journalists too!
Being different proved to be an advantage. I talked to other young journalists who were astounded by our school’s press freedom, thanks in large part to our principal Greg Fucheck, who received the JEA Administrator of the Year award at the conference. I was interviewed multiple times; usually about country artists or other topics I’d known nothing about. The difference in accents, expectations and even greetings left me thrilled.
However what really captured my attention were our similarities. I made a lot of connections and friendships on the trip, finding things in common with people I would have never interacted with on my own.
Although it was scary, going to Nashville was a risk I’m glad I took. I made one really close friend on the trip and talked to a lot of people I regularly wouldn’t have. At first I was scared of leaving my comfort zone, but once I did, I quickly learned to love my surroundings.
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https://bronxrivernews.org/2025/11/first-time-flyer-takes-to-the-skies/
https://bronxrivernews.org/2025/11/fucheck-accept-national-journalism-award/
Aminata Fofana • Dec 15, 2025 at 11:49 am
So nice meeting you guys!!
Zoe Reyes • Dec 15, 2025 at 1:39 pm
Same here!!