Mrs. Fernandez is the PMA Journalism teacher and she’s done her job right. She’s been teaching journalism for 8 years and has won a considerable amount of awards. However, recently the team won a few awards that added to their collection of accomplishments. Competing against six schools in the Illinois Journalism Education Association’s annual yearbook contest, yearbooks from throughout the state are submitted and divided into categories by school size.

Fernandez and her journalism 2017- 2018 group recently won third place in Copywriting, a honorable mention for Best Use of Photography, honorable mention for Graphics, and lastly another honorable mention for Theme Development.

“We compete against some strong schools, like the University of Chicago Lab school. They give us a run for our money, that’s for sure! The judges said there was a lot of strong competition for sports coverage and design,” said Mrs. Fernandez.

The Illinois Journalism Education Association competition does bring out the best of every school by always giving suggestions on ways to improve their yearbook. They give reasons for improvement to make each book better and help them win.

“Every time we win anything it’s awesome. It reassures the editors and me that we are doing something right. On the other hand, when we don’t win a category we don’t let it get us down. We learn from the winners and use what we’ve learned in the next book,” said Mrs. Fernandez.