Teacher Fellows Empower Students as Storytellers

Over the 2023-2024 school year, 18 teachers from 12 unique states participated in the Pulitzer Center Teacher Fellowship, inspiring 1,300 students from grades 4 - 12 to critically engage with global news stories and apply their learning in cumulative projects demonstrating empowered action.
 

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 analyzing Center reporting and other media to increase their understanding of global issues, practice the skills and content they were learning in class, and apply their knowledge to a culminating project demonstrating empowered action
 

This blog captures how 300 students in three states ultimately applied what they learned from their teachers’ units to projects that empowered students to apply journalistic curiosity and research to projects that documented how Pulitzer Center focus issues affect their own 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.

 

“Students spoke about the impact of the unit, and how it provided space for them to connect to their communities and see the world from new perspectives. Those perspectives provided both new information and reiterated that they are not alone in their concerns and actions in the world. Student projects focused on their everyday stories, and brought to life the ways that their voices can have an impact.”

-Rivanna Jihan, high school social studies teacher, Chicago

High School Social Studies Students Elevate Teen Perspectives of Underreported Stories in Chicago

Rivanna Jihan’s high school social studies students employed the questions that drive underreported global stories to capture local underreported stories and center teen perspectives. 
 

Throughout the unit, students explored a range of underreported global and local stories that centered local and youth perspectives. Projects included The Talk by Jesse Ryan for Scientific American, “Climate Change Is Driving a Global Youth Revolution," by Sara Miller Llana and Stephanie Hanes for The Christian Science Monitor, "The Forgotten Generation: Young People Born with HIV in Malawi," by Jennifer Stephens for Global Health NOW and "These Nigerian Students Built Low-Cost Device To Clean Petrol-Polluted Water," by Omolola Afolabi for The Nation. 

Jihan’s students engaged with guest speaker Sherman “Dilla” Thomas to explore Chicago history ,and photojournalist Brian Frank to learn photojournalism skills. 
 

Ultimately, students created short photo essays capturing a person or issue in their neighborhood/community. They presented that person or issue through a lens similar to Peter DiCampo and Austin Merrill’s Everyday Africa or Dilla Thomas’ “Everything Dope About America Comes from Chicago.”

Click below for Ms. Jihan’s full unit plan, Everyday Youth Telling Their Own Stories.

High School Literature Students in Atlanta, Georgia Applied Analysis of Climate and Environment Reporting to Research and  Amplify  Environmental Justice Solutions in their Communities

Deidra Wright’s World Literature students engaged with nearly half a dozen Pulitzer Center-supported projects to examine different methods journalists used to report on the impact of natural disasters on communities in Haiti, Puerto Rico, Texas, and Louisiana. “Throughout my unit on natural disasters and environmental injustices, my students were engaged in the various labs I set up to explore underreported stories centered on the impact of natural disasters and environmental injustices on marginalized communities,” Wright explained in a post-fellowship survey. “My students used the global issues and the stories explored to connect to issues in their communities and find ways to use their voice to make change.”
 

Students researched their final projects by researching which local government officials are part of environmental committees and by researching local environmental activists. They also looked at what issues local officials and activists were advocating for in their communities to determine the focuses for their final projects. In the end, students shared their research by creating podcasts, photo projects, and narrative essays.

“I had one of the best experiences with the PBL (project-based learning) project. It was so unique and different compared to other group projects we had done...This project also helps us realize that there is so much pollution that is happening in all parts of the world that can eventually impact our lives and no one is talking about it. All the research and articles we reviewed in class gave us important information to say in our podcast"

-High school student in Ellenwood, GA who engaged with the unit “Green Justice” in spring 2024.

Click below for Ms. Wright’s full unit plan, Green Justice: Exploring how rhetoric and art are used to inform and empower communities.

Fourth-Graders in Massachusetts Celebrate the Legacies of Black and Latinx Communities Through Journalism and Art

Fellow Laverne Mickens worked with her fourth-grade students to explore ideas of culture, identity and race by analyzing a range of multimedia resources and texts which included fiction, nonfiction, and underreported news stories. Students leveraged discussion, personal reflection, and art making to celebrate not only their own unique heritage, but the diversity of their classroom. 

Mickens collaborated with school site art teachers to conduct a multicultural  fair. Students created and played music and presented art that celebrated their many identities. 

Click below for Ms. Mickens’ unit, Exploring Black and Hispanic Excellence: Stories and Origins.

For more information on our fellowship program, and to explore units by the 106 amazing educators who have participated in our teacher fellowships over the past four years, click here.