Each year the Florida Scholastic Press Association, an organization dedicated to promoting scholastic journalism statewide, holds their annual Spring digital contest that allows Florida student journalists to showcase their work in a variety of categories ranging from writing to photography, multimedia and broadcast, among others.
Every year, MAST journalists in Ms. Olivera’s Journalism classes, for Yearbook and Newspaper, enter different categories of the contest. Unbeknownst to many at MAST, we are not just a school of scientists. There are many creative students in this school and thanks to opportunities like these, those students get to be showcased.
This year, a handful of journalism students from MAST @ Homestead participated in the FSPA 2022 Spring Digital Contest. Of those students, two were recognized as All Florida winners, ranking them among the top of student journalists in Florida. Those two students were seniors Lara Gastelumendi for her Editorial and Cheyenne Martinez for animal pet photo.
Lara’s piece titled, What You Should Know About The Recent Covid Surge + Recommendations from a 17 Year Old was a critical editorial about the environment of our country and the world in the last 2 years and its handling of the Covid Surge along with her recommendations. The piece was a brilliant display of information regarding a sensitive topic, going over the omicron variant and updated CDC Guidelines interwoven with her own personal perspective on the subject as a young teen. It truly highlights the power of the voice that young teens have today in their school communities and how teens today are truly invested in the issues that impact their day to day lives, while the adults are doing a sub par job of handling the situations.
Cheyenne Martinez entered the Animal/Pet Photo category with her photograph of her furry friend Harley, capturing the goofiness of her stunning German Shepherd in a beautifully detailed portrait shot. Cheyenne also placed “Excellent: for two other photography entries she submitted.
Harley by Cheyenne Martinez
As a whole, 7 MAST journalists were awarded in several categories demonstrating the excellence our school’s students can accomplish. Each and every one of these individuals worked hard all year and dedicated time to craft their ideas, perfect their skills, and write articles which reflected not only their ideals and sentiment but also spoke about issues that otherwise would be taboo or perhaps not spoken about enough. Please join us in congratulating each of them:
Lara Gastelumendi, Editor In Chief, Editorial, “All Florida”, Editorial, “Excellent”
Anthony Asseff, Editor In Chief, Editorial, “Honorable Mention”
Victoria Sosa, Features Editor, Entertainment Feature Story, “Excellent”, Review, “Honorable Mention”, General Feature Story, “Honorable Mention”
Marie Calzada, Staff Writer, Editorial, “Excellent”, Editorial, “Honorable Mention”, Review, “Honorable Mention”
Jaydy Suarez, Staff Writer, Entertainment Feature Story, “Honorable Mention”
Jocelyn Landa, Yearbook Designer, Computer Drawn Illustration, “Honorable Mention”
Cheyenne Martinez, Yearbook Designer, Animal Pet Photo, “All Florida” and “Excellent”, Florida Nature Photo, “Excellent”
