From the newsroom to the classroom

Montgomery County, Maryland, educators filled a meeting room at NPR headquarters at the start of NewsLitCamp.

More than 70 educators from Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Schools kicked off their summer with an NLP NewsLitCamp® at National Public Radio’s Washington, D.C. headquarters. A signature NLP professional development program, NewsLitCamps are held in conjunction with a news organization. With guidance from NLP staff, educators and journalists come together to examine the importance of news literacy and the standards of quality journalism.

“It was really useful to talk to professional journalists and editors to get their opinions/expertise on aspects of news judgment and bias! It helps me make my journalism classes more credible and more based in what journalists are actually doing and talking about,” wrote Megan Cooley-Klein, an English and journalism teacher at Quince Orchard High School in Gaithersburg, Maryland, who attended the NPR session.

NLP has held six NewsLitCamps since April 2017 — two in the Chicago area, two in Washington and one each in New York City and Miami. Each day-long program features an overview of today’s information landscape and news literacy strategies by an NLP staff member, along with breakout sessions led by journalists on topics such as news judgment, bias, beat coverage and the standards of photojournalism, and closes with teacher-selected workshops on topics that they identify during the day.

In addition to a NewsLitCamp next month in Arlington, Virginia, NLP already has sessions planned for Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago and Lexington, Kentucky, this year. For more information, contact Damaso Reyes, NLP’s director of partnerships