We received four outstanding pieces for the December contest that all earned December Story of the Month!
Lily Rantanen of Iowa City explores the Iowa Brain Drain that sees young people move out of state. She talks with numerous Iowa City students and an Iowa City, City High graduate who moved backed after college and is an Iowa House member. Way to use your connections! Lily’s story earned her Best of SNO award. Read her piece here.
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A story written by Jake Beneke, Carter Birch Houchins-Witt and Colin Wehrle of Iowa City West finds that over half of the 90 West students surveyed prefer written tests over online in their piece about tech in the classroom. It also tells the teacher perspective and how hard it is to monitor a digital classroom. The Digital Classroom won a Best of SNO award. Check out their piece here.
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Autumn Overland interviews Mason City’s assistant superintendent who made national headlines when she used AI to create a banned book list after new legislation last year. The piece takes the angle of a year after the event happened. Great idea to continue to follow a story.Read Autumn’s article here.
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At Cedar Rapids Kennedy, Sonja Woerner writes about what she sees as a lack of transparency from her school district. In a public meeting about creating Freshman Academies and Academic Pathways, Woerner made this observation, “After over an hour of presentations and borderline demeaning group activities, there was little time left for questions from the audience and that segment of the meeting was even cut three minutes short of the allocated time.” Students attending public meetings and calling out administrative speak. Epic. This article won a Best of SNO award and triggered a change in district information rollout on the new magnet school projects! Read Sonja’s article here.
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The Iowa High School Press Association created a new contest, Story & Photo of the Month, for a chance for students to be featured on our social media. Students can submit a link to their best timely photos and stories to be entered into the monthly contest. At the end of the month, IHSPA chooses a story and a photo to post on our Instagram, Facebook, and website.
