Reading the Newspaper

We missed church this morning (overslept, then graded the Pod), so after breakfast (my husband fixed blueberry muffins--he is such a sweet guy!), my husband went to town (Francesville) to pick up a newspaper, which we usually stop for after church.  Long sentence--whew! 

Now that the Pod is graded, the Midterm Blog scoresheets are ready and marked for the Blog Creation points, and I have checked Messages for the other four classes, I think I will take some time to read the newspaper.

Newspapers....

About 10 years ago I was invited to a Newspapers in Education seminar at the Lafayette Journal and Courier office.  It was a quick seminar--maybe 3 hours one summer morning.  At the end the leader asked us to complete a questionnaire, then add the number of copies of the paper we would like to receive for our students to use and how often we would like to receive them---free.  FREE?   Free.

The highest number of students I had in my classes during the year was 25, so I asked if I could order that number.  Yes. I asked if I could have papers delivered every day that we were in session. Yes. 

My heart started beating faster.  Twenty-five newspapers delivered to my door each day of the school year ---FREE!  Yes, FREE!

What a great opportunity for me and for my students!

I was so excited!!!!

Why the excitement?

During the seminar, the leader shared a story about a student who struggled to read.  He froze every time a teacher even mentioned a reading assignment because he couldn't process the words and larger paragraphs.  He had always seen one teacher reading a newspaper each morning.  He asked one day if he could look at it.  He found that he could read the newspaper much easier than he could read a textbook, so he asked the teacher to help him learn how to read better with the newspaper.  Finally he asked if he could take the newspaper with him.  You see, other students made fun of him because of his difficulty with reading. But when he was carrying the newspaper, whipping it out during study time or before classes began, they saw him differently. His self-esteem inproved. Plus he was learning many things by reading the paper.

I had so many students who would sit and NOT read the lit selections when I gave them time to do this.  Maybe if they became more comfortable reading the newspaper each day, they would get into the mode of reading the short stories too.  (It worked. They did.)

Next I saw many teaching opportunities.  With our 90 minute class periods, we were encouraged to include a variety of activities to keep the students focused and to fill the time period. Newspapers were a great way to start the class (while I was taking attendance or talking with students who had been absent about make up work), or a way to fill the time after a test quietly while others were finishing, or to fill the time when we finished a lesson early or returned after a convocation or pep session and there wasn't time to teach something new.

Also there were so many skills and techniques that I could share with my students using newspapers.  Read the article and summarize.  Read the article and express your opinion in your journal.  Look for a job or a new car or a house in the Classifieds. Log the information in your journal and analyze the type of information included.  Read an obituary, then write a similar one for a character in the short story we just read.  Learn how to read a weather map, a box score (that was a fun one!), the stock market charts.  Track the story line in a comic strip for 10 days (then we focused on the history of the comic, the creator and the illustrator in a research paper).   Have a scavenger hunt (that was fun!) to find certain bits of information in the paper (of course I had to create that in the morning before school started if I had some time in my room with no interruptions).  We looked at national news, state news, local news, sports, advice columns, classifieds, editorials and letters to the editor (we wrote a few of those also and sent them off and were even published).  It was a great opportunity for learning!  Plus the US History teacher said he noticed an upswing of participation in Current Events discussion because the students were reading the newspapers each day.

At the end of the day, the newspapers went on a chair in the hallway outside my door, free to anyone who wanted to pick up one.  They usually disappeared quickly.  One student always stopped by to take one home to share with his parents.  Another always asked me to save one for him since he was in a morning class and didn't want them all to disappear before he could return after school.  Nice to know that many students besides the ones in my classroom were benefitting from the free newspapers.

There were only two downfalls to this  wonderful opportunity.  One was a comment from a disgruntled student who really disliked English and me.  He wrote in his cover letter for his final portfolio that reading the newspapers and the activities that we did with them were only because I was lazy and didn't want to teach what I was supposed to be teaching.  Ok..those of you who know me and those who have had me as an instructor are probably laughing at that statement. As my daughters often say "Do you not know me?" Come on.

The other was with my replacement when I felt to take the position at Ivy Tech.  I had not planned to leave, so I had already ordered my set of newspaper for the coming year.  The new teacher saw no point to having all of those newspapers delivered each day.  Often she left them at the curb rather than having them picked up and delivered to her room.  If they did make it to her room, she often left them in the packages and threw them in the trash at the end of the day.  Since my son-in-law's brother was in her class, he gave me the low-down on the status of the newspapers.

I do know that reading the newspapers have had a continued effect on several of my students.  My son-in-law and daughter were both in my junior Lit classes when we were reading newspapers.  They both enjoy reading the newspaper each day.  Several of my former students who are now FB friends have mentioned that they have continued reading the newspaper, sometimes online, each day.

Newspaper withdrawal seemed to hit me at the end of the year for those four years I used newspapers in the classroom. Since we live in the Black Hole of Pulaski County where no daily newspapers are delivered, I really enjoyed the daily dose of news.  Now I look at the jconline version.  Just not the same as flipping through the pages, however. 

With that....I think I will close, fix a new cup of tea, and read the Sunday paper.