Pulitzer Center Update September 4, 2024
Teacher Fellows Empower Students to Connect Their Communities to Global News
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Lesson Plans
Investigating, Informing, Influencing: Exploring Current Issues on a National and Global Scale
Students use a thinking routine to analyze a curated list of seven news stories on a global issue they select. Working in groups, they evaluate connections in the reporting, formulate claims about the...
18 teachers who participated in the 2023-2024 Teacher Fellowship inspired 1,300 students in grades 4-12 across 12 states to engage critically with global news stories and apply their learning to projects that demonstrate empowered action.
"I have a new understanding of AI algorithms and how they are developed, especially within social media platforms. I wonder if this algorithm is used on my posts."- student from Marietta, GA
“I learned how broad the issue of global public health is. Before, I thought about public health as being about medicine and hospitals, but the reporting I read went into period poverty and other niche issues I had never thought of before…I feel more connected and more passionate about this issue now…It made me more interested in learning what I can do to help.”- Toni, a high school student from Marietta, GA
As part of the fellowship program, educators explored reporting on several of the Pulitzer Center’s focus issues and evaluated how engaging students in global news stories could help students strengthen the skills they are working on in their courses while also cultivating local and personal connections to global issues. Educators ultimately developed and taught standards-aligned unit plans that guided students in an analysis of Center reporting and other media to increase their understanding of global issues and practice the skills and content they were learning in class. All fellows were ultimately asked to build final projects into their units that challenged students to apply the content and skills that they learned. Several educators designed projects that invited students to share the key details and themes from reporting they explored with students, educators, and families in their communities. They prepared students by creating engaging presentations, comprehensive graphic organizers, group reading exercises, and other activities to help students work together to analyze the key themes in reporting.
Over 500 students in five states ultimately applied what they learned from their teachers’ units to the creation of infographics, Instagram galleries, posters, public events, and more that connected the key themes from global news stories to their school communities. Read on to see what they created, and to explore the teaching instructions and materials that teacher fellows created to guide their students to their final projects.
U.S. Literature Students in Georgia Analyze Rhetoric and Themes in Seven Global News Stories to Create Social Media Campaigns to Inform Other Teens
Alexandra Yeganegi, a U.S. literature teacher in Marietta, GA, engaged Pulitzer Center reporting to teach her students about how authors engage rhetorical devices in non-fiction texts and how readers can synthesize details from multiple sources to communicate themes. First, students evaluated their connections to news outlets and their experiences engaging with the news. They compared and contrasted different news sources, and then evaluated headlines from different news outlets for stories related to a global issue selected by the class. Students used guiding questions to analyze a curated list of seven news stories on a global issue they selected. Working in groups, they evaluated connections in the reporting, formulated claims about the issue, supported the claims with strong evidence from the texts, and then used digital media tools to create Instagram carousels that inform their school audience about the issue they selected. Carousels also ended with a call to action.
- Student-created Instagram carousel focused on reporting about migration to the U.S.
- Student-created Instagram carousel focused on homelessness in Georgia
- Student-created Instagram carousel focused on women's rights worldwide
Visual Arts students in Michigan leverage masks as symbols of social activism to highlight issues that reflect their culture or community
Olivia Miller, a high school visual arts educator in Kentwood, MI, explored the connection between masquerade and social activism in her Advanced Ceramics and Sculpture class. Students first explored the themes and ideas that shape and define communities. Then, students considered how art unites communities, often helping them process the impact of social and global challenges and inviting audiences to understand their experiences. Students engaged with Pulitzer Center projects The 'Spider-Man' of Sudan and Shipibo-Konibo: An Indigenous Community Resists With Medicinal Plants Against the COVID-19 Virus, exploring how art and performance capture the spirit of communities most affected by systemic global issues like peace & conflict and health inequities. Finally, students worked with Masquerade Mind Map handouts [canva] [.pdf], Masquerade Sketch handouts [canva][.pdf], and Artist Statement Templates [canva] [.pdf] to design masks that communicate issues that reflect their cultures and communities. In their masquerade event, students highlighted a range of stories and identities including bi-racial and trans identities, important historical events like the conflict in Kosovo and the role of the Trung Sisters, Vietnamese military leaders who led rebellions against China’s occupation.
Click here for Ms. Miller’s unit plan “Unmasking the Story: Masquerades as Social Lessons”
Students analyze how social media algorithms connect with underreported global news stories
Students from Katherine Smith’s class in Chicago presenting their research on how social media engaged with the topic of traditional healing in Taiwan. Image by Katerine Smith. United States, 2024.
Katherine Smith, a high school English and ESL educator in Chicago, IL, designed a unit that encouraged students to use their social media prowess to evaluate whether bias played a role in their research about global news topics. Smith began this unit by exploring our connection to social media, encouraging students to evaluate the messages they see daily and analyze how the algorithm curates the content they are consuming. Students used a variety of teacher-created analysis tools developed to encourage metacognitive reflection and text analysis. These tools included a Pulitzer Center Reporting Analysis Tool [.docx][.pdf] and an Analysis Tool for Social Media Posts [.docx][.pdf]. Ultimately, students chose a global issue, selected a Pulitzer Center article, and researched the topic through their social media platforms. They then created a google slides presentation to share their findings. Topics ranged from climate change in the Amazon to the use of AI to monitor student protests.
Click here for Ms. Smith’s unit plan, “Fake News + Text Analysis”
Students Employ Pulitzer Center Reporting About AI to Analyze The Health of the First Amendment
In Kerri-Jean Furtado’s 8th-grade civics class in Fall River, MA, students analyzed how rapidly advancing AI technologies have impacted the health of the First Amendment in the United States. This learning journey begins with a foundation in the five fundamental rights protected by the First Amendment. Students consider how these rights are expressed in different contexts by our increasingly digital world. After reading Peering Into The Black Box, a reporting project by AI Reporting Fellow Arijit Sen for The Dallas Morning News that explores how colleges use AI to monitor student protests, students craft an artistic representation that conveys the impact of AI on First Amendment rights.
Click here for Ms. Furtado’s unit plan, "The (Evolution of the) First Amendment in a Digital Landscape"
Students Analyze Reporting on Migration to Explore Push/Pull Factors and Evaluate Themes of Querencia, or Belonging
In Robert Frausto’s high school Mexican American Studies class in Albquerque, NM, students examined underreported stories related to immigration and related the articles they read to themes of querencia. Working in groups, they present the story they investigated to the class, and apply their analyses to the development of digital cuentos telling stories of migration from their communities.As defined in the book, Querencia : reflections on the New Mexico homeland, the term querencia comes from bullfighting culture. In that respect it means, "...a place which develops in the course of the fight where the bull makes his home. It does not usually show at once, but develops in his brain as the fight goes on. In this place he feels that he has his back against the wall and in his querencia he is inestimably more dangerous and almost impossible to kill.” It is also defined as, "...a place where one feels safe, a place from which one's strength of character is drawn, where one feels at home." Frausto created interactive slides to model the article analysis for students, and created a resource to teach them how to write precís statements for their presentations. He also guided students in applying their analysis of querencia in the reporting on others’ experiences of migration to then research and present their own “digital cuentos” documenting stories of migration in their communities and how those stories also reflected querencia.
The following are examples of students’ presentations and projects they created to document stories of migration from their communities.
- Student analysis of "‘We’re Going to Find You.’ Mexican Cartels Turn Social Media Into Tools for Extortion, Threats, and Violence" by Rebecca Plevin and Omar Ornelas for The Desert Sun
- Student analysis of "A Country That Welcomes Migration" by Patrick Ammerman for Yes!
- Student analysis of "Deported to Haiti Even Though He Wasn't Born There" by Jacqueline Charles for The Miami Herald
- Aaliyah interviews the older brother of a friend about his experience migrating from Mexico
- Abby reflects on an interview with her grandmother about migrating from Cuba to the U.S. at an older age
Frausto shared that a highlight from his project was when one of his students chose to create a digital cuento about his mother, who was a former student of Frausto’s. In a post-program email, Frausto wrote, “The cuento from Cruz R. is pretty special. His mom was pregnant in her jr/sr year and was in my English class when she delivered. When she couldn't find daycare she would bring him to class. I would carry him while she worked. He is a very special young man.”
Click here for Mr. Frausto’s unit plan, “Our Immigration Cuentos.”
All Fellowship units and examples of students’ work will be published throughout fall 2024 and highlighted in our weekly K-12 Education newsletter. Subscribe to the Pulitzer Center’s education newsletter for more on the Fellowship program, including the full unit plans from all 2023-2024 Teacher Fellows and applications for the fall 2024 Teacher Fellowship program.
