District Fellowship Program Application Form

Deadline: Dec. 1, 2026

We recommend you use the “Save & Continue” button below to preserve your progress as you complete the application. Keeping a backup of responses in your own files is also a good idea. Contact us if you have any questions.

If your district is located in the Eastern or Central time zones, please email Brittney Smith, bsmith@newslit.org.

If your district is located in the Mountain, Pacific or another time zone, please email Elliott Goodman, egoodman@newslit.org.

Section 1: Background Information

District Name:

District Headquarters Address:

Section 2: Fellowship Team

List

Name:

Email:

Position Title:

Phone Number:

Please upload a resume for each of the fellowship team members. Each resume should be no more than two pages. They will be used to evaluate the team’s capacity to plan and deliver professional development, design curriculum and demonstrate leadership in an educational setting. (We are not looking for each team member to possess all these skills, but rather that the three applicants together will form a well-rounded team as a whole.)

File

Drop files here or

Max. file size: 2 GB.

Section 3: Questionnaire

1. Why is your district applying for the fellowship? Why is news and media literacy learning important to your district faculty, staff and students?

2. In what grade level(s) and/or discipline(s) do you intend to integrate a unit of news and media instruction districtwide? Explain the reasoning for your selection. (This can change and evolve.)

3. How does the fellowship fit into your district’s strategic plan?

4. How would you describe your district (e.g. enrollment, staff, buildings, demographics)?

5. Year 1 of the fellowship will focus on creating a detailed action plan for implementation. Describe your initial ideas to implement news and media literacy curriculum in your district.

6. What potential challenges do you foresee arising during the fellowship? How do you plan to address them?

7. Explain how your district would sustain news and media literacy education beyond the duration of the three-year fellowship.

8. Describe how the implementation of the action plan will increase access to equitable opportunities for all students, especially historically underserved students (including students from a variety of backgrounds, cultures, socioeconomic classes, etc.).

9. Briefly describe commonly used edtech products (including any learning management systems) in your district and any services used for roster integration (such as Clever or Global Grid for Learning). Please explain any processes, procedures or policies that will be required to fully integrate Checkology into all the schools that will be a part of your fellowship implementation plan.

10. Is school board approval of educator-led initiatives similar to the District Fellowship Program commonly required? Please explain your response.

11. Please share with us any special circumstances or information specific to your district that would be pertinent for us to consider.

12. If you used any artificial intelligence tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Gemini, Grammarly) to assist in the preparation of this application, please describe that here.

Section 4: Budget Proposal

Include a one-page budget that provides ideas for spending the $10,000 stipend for each of the three years of the program. (Commonly mentioned expenses include reimbursing teachers for training and out-of-classroom time, purchasing materials for book studies, purchasing student-facing resources and travel for professional development.) This budget is tentative, can include estimates and does not need to be written in a spreadsheet format. It is helpful, though not required, to include details such as the contractual training hourly rate or other standardized costs that may be relevant to your budget.

File

Max. file size: 2 GB.

Section 5: Letter of Administrative Support

In addition to this application, please upload a signed letter on official letterhead from a district-level administrator who has the authority to approve and support your participation in this fellowship program. The letter must include three things:

Identification of the administrator’s title and position within the district.
Support for a plan to build towards an eventual districtwide guarantee for implementation of the news and media literacy curriculum your team will design.
Support for news and media literacy instruction to continue after the fellowship program ends and your district achieves alumnus status.