MOUNT VERNON — Newspaper In Education programs were first introduced in the 1930s as an educational partnership between newspapers and participating school systems, with the early programs aimed at secondary schools to teach current events. Today, NIE is an international program for students in preschool through college and beyond.
More than 900 newspapers in the United States alone support NIE’s goal to build a lifetime reading habit among children and adults. Those publishers provide classrooms with newspapers, current, up-to-date resources for local, state and world news and issues. Many newspapers charge teachers for participating in the program and also charge for the costs of the papers, but the Mount Vernon News NIE program provides those resources at no cost to the teachers because it believes that an early habit of reading the newspaper helps individuals become informed, responsible citizens.
The Newspaper In Education Department of the Mount Vernon News is entering its 10th year of promoting literacy and encouraging young people to become lifelong readers. Mount Vernon’s program unofficially began in the fall of 1997 with the inclusion of a Countdown to Christmas page in the daily edition.
According to NIE coordinator Michelle Hartman, Disney was planning on re-releasing the “Little Mermaid,” and developed a special comic strip leading up to the release of the movie. The News had no room on the comics page at that time, but wanted to use the strip, so Hartman was asked to create a page that would include that comic strip, and be geared toward young readers. Although called Countdown to Christmas, the page included information about all the traditional November and December holidays, including Hanukkah. The page also included instructions on how to make holiday crafts such as gingerbread houses.
When the page was discontinued after Christmas, the News received a myriad of letters and phone calls from people asking, “what happened to the kids’ page?” That’s when the weekly Kidding Around page was born. It premiered on Saturday, Feb. 7, 1998, and has been a regular Saturday feature ever since. The first three Kidding Around pages included activities centered around Valentine’s Day, heart month and National Dental Health Month. “Kidding Around” is written mainly for children in grades kindergarten through fourth grade, and includes puzzles and word games to make reading fun for the younger group.
Because “Kidding Around’ was so successful, “Newsworthy” was developed to encourage teachers to get more involved with using newspapers in the classroom. While “Kidding Around” is part of every Saturday paper, “Newsworthy” is available only to schools. It is a weekly four-page section related directly to the newspaper of the day, on Mondays. The worksheet type format includes photos and headlines, and features questions related to the current edition, including The Inside Story information and the chapter stories. It also has a quiz section which encourages the students to use the newspaper to answer a series of questions. A teacher’s edition provides the answers.
Debuting with four teachers who received 25 papers each every week, “Newsworthy” has grown dramatically over the years. During the 2005-06 school year, 41,710 copies of “Newsworthy” were distributed to classrooms, and 27,765 have already been given to classes this school year.
When the NIE program was offered a free-of-charge Wishbone chapter story from PBS, Hartman created a brand new young readers page called GEAR: Get Excited About Reading. GEAR is geared toward students in fifth-grade and above, and can be accompanied by the “Newsworthy” homework section. That’s when everything, such as the chapter stories and Job Journey, started going together on one dedicated page in the Monday paper.
The next addition to the NIE offerings from the Mount Vernon News was the “Building Blocks” page. This page is printed once a month on the first print date of each month, and was originally written for preschool and kindergarten pupils. “Building Blocks” is designed as a family literacy aid to encourage families to sit down and read together. It has evolved over the years to include a little bit of everything for all grade levels and families. The page often has a coloring project, reviews of books for young readers and an activity calendar for families.
In addition to free newspapers, the NIE department of Mount Vernon News provides other educational services such as educational sections on specific topics like Ohio History, teachers’ guides and other curriculum resources, and inservice training for educators wanting to learn how to most effectively use newspapers in the classroom.
From its modest beginning serving four teachers, the NIE program has grown to include 177 participating teachers and home school parents, and has provided more than 420,513 newspapers to support the goal: “To get kids to read.”
