Foundation

The NAA Foundation focuses on Newspaper In Education, newspaper youth content, scholastic journalism and diversity. In this blog, you'll learn about products, programs and resources that emphasize the use of newspapers and other media by young people. You'll also learn about programs and activities that can help news media companies transform their cultures in order to grow business and increase readership and audience.

NIE: The Post-Standard Offers Three Ideas

Need more ways for teachers to use newspapers in the classroom? Taylor Clark can help.

Clark, community relations specialist at The Post-Standard in Syracuse, is part of a team that has developed three successful Newspaper In Education projects in the last four years. Quick and easy for The Post-Standard to create, these are free to schools.

The first coincides with TV Turnoff Week, which occurs annually in April. Teachers in The Post-Standard's readership area promote reading and other non-TV related classroom activities. Newspaper employees are dispatched to lead discussions or activities in the classrooms of the first 50 area teachers who request visits. Supplemental materials are provided on The Post-Standard NIE blog.

"Last year, we visited about 150 classrooms during the week," Clark says. "Many of those were new teachers who had never participated in NIE programming before."

Last fall, The Post-Standard hosted its first-ever mock election. Many Syracuse-area high school students, ineligible to cast votes in the election, voted there instead. More than 250 teachers registered their classes for the blog election.

"The election took place on a custom-made social networking site," Clark says. "The social networking site was safe for students and teachers in our area."

The Post-Standard received great exposure on Celebrate Newspapers Day (see last year's sign-up sheet here), held in conjunction with National Newspaper Week during the first full week of October. Free papers were offered to schools in the general readership area. Schools also could request speakers from The Post-Standard to lead in-class discussions and newspaper-related activities.

If you have an idea you'd like to share with other NIE professionals, send an e-mail to naafoundation@naa.org.

-- By Rashad Mulla, NAA Foundation intern

About Marina Hendricks

Marina Hendricks is manager of the NAA Foundation. She manages Newspaper In Education, youth content and scholastic journalism programs, oversees the development of print and online products, and coordinates the NAA Foundation Web site, www.naafoundation.org. Before joining the Foundation, Marina was a features writer and the teen editor at The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia. She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Marshall University.