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Above-the-Fold-Keeping-Tabs

Above the Fold

KEEPING TABS

'HEY!'-Look It Over

6 STEPS TO MAKING ‘HEY!’ 1 NIE began by meeting with the Department of Public Instruction to determine major health issues in Wisconsin schools. 2 DPI officials and area teachers helped to design a special section that would provide valuable health and fitness information to schools and teachers. 3 NIE developed a proposal to seek sponsor support of classroom newspapers that would be provided to schools through the HEY! program. 4 As sponsor commitments were received, health experts and teachers reviewed section content to ensure accuracy and apply state education standards. 5 Newspaper orders and HEY! participation were secured by working closely with DPI data and designing a mass mailer to schools months before the program’s launch. 6 After distribution, NIE plans a survey with affidavits mailed to schools. Survey results will be used to improve the program in 2006.

Dr. Phil and Michael Redd may never have appeared together in the same sentence, let alone a similar advertising campaign, but that didn’t stop Tom Hayes, NIE coordinator at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He drafted the popular psychologist and Redd, a star guard for the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team, to participate in the paper’s HEY! (Health Education for Youth) section.

The 16-page tabloid was distributed statewide during the week of Jan. 24 to about 300,000 students at 2,300 schools. HEY! includes classroom activities that lead the students to all sections of the paper.

“Dr. Phil saw a copy of the 2003 HEY! section and became interested in getting involved in the program, believing it was a great health education tool for students and parents,” Hayes says. “Through the HEY! program, we will be able to build community support while serving the schools and meeting company objectives.”

Written for grades 4–7, HEY! gives health and fitness tips in a “don’t go to extremes” manner, explaining how to set realistic health goals and achieve them. Highlights include: a full page on dental health and the “Spit Tobacco” program; an activity-tracking exercise; and state standards applied in health, behaviors, goal setting, decision making, culture and media, and math and science. Teachers reviewed the content and applied state standards where appropriate.

A student essay contest was offered with the winner getting a visit to his or her school by Redd, Energee! (the Bucks dance team) and the team mascot. Dr. Phil can be heard on a 30-second television commercial that promotes the section and airs during all Bucks games.

For more information, contact
Tom Hayes at (414) 224-2631 or
thayes@journalsentinel.com.

PICTURE PERFECT

‘Mirror’ Proves Fairest of All

I recently took my class to the Altoona (Pa.) Mirror as part of our grant project. We were actually there for the printing of the paper and then stayed the remainder of the day and met with reporters and photographers who critiqued our paper and shared helpful hints. The Mirror people also offered to run some of the students’ stories in their paper.

-Wanda Pletcher, Blue and White-Roosevelt Junior High School, Altoona, Pa. (2004 NAA Foundation Partnership Grant School)

SITE SEEING

NeXt Writer Appears Online on PBS Show

SHORT TAKES Talk to Editorial Sometimes, it works well for NIE to be part of editorial, says Michelle Hartman, NIE coordinator for the Mount Vernon (Ohio) News. “For instance, one week I focused our Saturday kids’ page on asthma, and we ran a lifestyle page about nonsmoking restaurants and the movement toward smoke-free environments. “It’s nice when we can collaborate like that,” though, she says, it probably doesn’t happen often enough. Teen Named to Reader Board When Colleen O’Conor, 14, a high school freshman from Wauwatosa, Wis., talks about perfect attendance, it may not be only for school. As the only non-adult member of the 10-person reader advisory committee for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, she has attended all the monthly meetings, according to O. Ricardo Pimentel, editorial page editor. Pimentel is responsible for the idea, saying that “it is a segment of our audience that we need to try to understand.” He chose O’Conor over 150 other applicants who also wrote essays in response to a solicitation in one of his columns. So far, he is pleased. “She has brought us the issues that are taking place in school,” he says.

Marina Blitshteyn, a writer for NeXt at The Buffalo News and an immigrant, was a first-time voter in the November election. Her essay about people exercising their right to vote appeared online on EXTRA, a “Newshour with Jim Lehrer” special for students (www.pbs.org/newshour/extra).

Here is a clip from her essay:

The gravity of the circumstances came in the form of rain, wide sheets of rain and endless gray. It kept the masses huddled, gave us an urgency for shelter and security.
On any other day like this one, I would be crawling under covers, playing with the remote. But November 2 is different. I stayed glued to the TV in taut anticipation. Among the scroll of countless numbers, I was a voice. If it seems rather egocentric, that’s because it is. As a first-time voter, I got the illusion that the fate of this agonizingly close election rests on my shoulders. In a way, it does.

I registered knowing full well this is one of the best elections to participate in. Even though my state of New York is not exactly a tossup, I honestly could not wait for my opinion to be heard. For starters, I started to get ready to vote back in 2000. A blend of firm ideology and political discourse got me to what I believed was a reasonable level of knowledge for the democratic process. Furthermore, I’ve been doing my own campaigning over the past four years on behalf of the candidate I feel should represent my country.

Finally, I exercised my right to vote. My mom and I went right after my last class, grabbed our voter registration cards and picture IDs, just in case. We arrived at the local church down our street. Despite the cold, wet, disturbing weather, people were coming in and out. I’d followed my parents to KidsVote, a youth election education program, last year, so the territory was more or less familiar to me....
With a war hovering over our heads like these foreboding clouds, the threat of terrorism and rainbow alerts, WMDs, OILs, ABCs, acronyms teasing us with hints of disaster, my life may indeed depend upon it. Too many words are being used loosely, circulating Web sites and newspapers. Talk of drafts, beheadings, fear.

If anything, this should be motivation for my generation to get out there the first chance they get. I was looking forward to a powerful wave of 18–29 age voters, spurred by famous singers and rappers making cameos on MTV, BET, VH1.

But ultimately, the decision to vote will not come from the latest fad. It will not even be taught in schools. This is a personal right, and, naturally, a choice. I made mine a long time ago, lucky enough to be surrounded by active thinkers and delightful dialogue. I realize not everyone is this fortunate, but the nation in which we live is a direct reflection of who we are as citizens. If its citizens don’t exercise their hard-earned right of expression, our leadership will certainly reflect this.

TO THE LETTER A Meaningful Class Trip By Anne Pusey My supervisor, Robie Scott, recently gave me an assignment. I was to arrange visits to several local schools, spending time in various classes with different demographics. Unlike my previous visits when I had gone to conduct NIE training or assist with a program, my instructions were simpler: I was only to listen and observe teachers using the newspaper and report my results. As a recent college graduate in my first year of my first “real” job, I knew I would bring an interesting perspective. I first observed a model NIE teacher with her well-trained and exuberant sixth-grade, language arts students at a suburban school and next a self-paced classroom of at-risk students at a city high school. One memorable day, I visited an eighth-grade Bible class at the private, affluent First Baptist Church School and a social studies class at the rural, impoverished campus of public Baptist Hill High School. I found that the two schools shared more than just a name; each class was led by a creative and resourceful teacher and populated with students excited to be using the newspaper. At a school where 60 percent of students receive free or reduced-price lunches and where many don’t have the opportunity to read a newspaper at home, students had already learned the benefits and joys of a newspaper. When I visited on a Tuesday, many were looking forward to Thursday for the weekly column on literature for children. Others kept past editions of The Post and Courier in their lockers to reference favorite stories. Most importantly, I saw the results of teacher training in action. All four teachers I observed had gone through NIE workshops, and I recognized that many of the lessons learned applied to their classrooms. I even had a few “aha” moments in which I was suddenly aware of the value of NIE tenets I had been preaching for months. At the end of the day, the true value of my classroom experience hit home when one of the high school teachers came to me with a kindly worded complaint. He said that he needed more materials for his students, that our tabs are great but because our largest market is middle school, they tend to be geared more towards younger students. He said that while, in reality, his students might be reading on that level, he doesn’t teach down to them. Teachers there believe in their students and that they can do better. I relayed his request to Robie, who invited him to sit in on our NIE board of advisers. He can lobby for increased high school coverage and provide us with his welcome perspective. At that moment, I began to understand that these are the teachers for whom we are working. These are the talented and capable students we work to inspire. Only by sitting in a student desk, eye to eye with a teacher, could I have realized this. I went back to my office, to the phone calls, tab orders and delivery complaints with a new outlook and appreciation for the goals we are working to achieve. Anne Pusey, NIE coordinator for The Post and Courier in Charleston, S.C., can be reached at (834) 937-5764 or apusey@postandcourier.com or by coming to NIE2005, May 17-20 in Charleston.

WORKPLACE HELP

It May Not Take a Village, But It Can Help

To conclude a project properly, create a workplace ritual during which participants gather for a final meeting to which everyone brings “something that symbolizes being involved in this work” and offers simple reflections, such as high and low points of the project.

So says the book, You Don’t Have to Do It Alone: How to Involve Others to Get Things Done (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2004) by Richard H. Axelrod, Emily M. Axelrod, Julie Beedon and Robert W. Jacobs, which takes a systematic approach.

“Set the scene creatively” and “establish an environment where people can be honest, non-defensive and celebratory about the work they have done together,” the authors note. “To build up a common picture, share stories in detail and make connections among them. You’ll find that almost everyone in the room will learn more things about the work and what happened as it unfolded. This can be a powerful experience.”

Such workplace rituals “help us deal with the ambiguities of endings.” Examples and anecdotes from corporations, government and the nonprofit sector illustrate helpful tools and techniques for resolving issues.