Mission to movement: Quarterly updates on NLP’s movement building work

Published on September 9, 2022 Movement Building

September – December 2022

Each quarter, the Movement Building work updates will keep you in tune with the efforts of NLP and our educator network toward making media literacy education a priority across the U.S. and creating a future founded on facts.

Our community of invested supporters enables NLP’s work, both inside and outside of the classroom. This commitment and interest allow us to continue to influence the media literacy landscape and fuel an achievable national initiative that equips people of all backgrounds with knowledge and skills to be active, informed participants in civic life.

Movement Builders in the Field

NLP’s NewsLitNation News Literacy Ambassadors and district partners defend democracy and promote news literacy in their classrooms and at the school district level.

District Fellowship program

NLP’s District Fellowship program brings together district leaders to build a sustainable and actionable plan for news literacy education implementation in their districts. During their two-year commitment to this program, fellows perform a needs-assessment and identify the grades and disciplines in their districts best suited for news/media literacy integration. They then work with NLP to create a scalable implementation plan.

Check out the new District Fellowship program webpage! Here, you can explore more about how our fellows are affecting media literacy education at the district level.
We selected and met with the first fellowship cohort of 17 district leaders from five school districts in July, and since then each district has developed a working team of up to 10 people from within their districts. They have been determining which grade levels and discipline areas they want to target for their news literacy instruction implementation plan.
To date, we have held three all-cohort convenings and each district has met one-on-one with NLP staff (all meetings to date have been virtual). In August, the cohort met with CEO Chuck Salter and Peter Adams, our senior vice president of research and design, to learn more about NLP’s vision and mission and the design of NLP’s news literacy instruction resources.
The next all-cohort meeting was held in October, and NLP staff conducted a training on best practices for communicating within their districts and communities about the importance of news literacy instruction.

Ambassador Updates

The News Literacy Ambassador Program supports local community organizing efforts to fight misinformation and pursue a mutual objective of creating a more news-literate generation of news consumers. Connect with an ambassador near you for events, presentations and to discuss the unique needs of educators in your school district or region.

Six new ambassadors were added to the program, expanding it to a total of 16 news literacy ambassadors around the country! New ambassadors include:Juan Armijo (NM) Grade 9-12 – Civics, Govt, History, Social Studies
Jocelyn Burlew (OH) Grade 6-8 – History, Digital/Media Literacy
Lesli Morris (UT) Grade 9-12 – English/ELA
Sean Scanlon (IL) Grade 9-12 – Administrator, Social Studies
David Doerr (TX) Grade 9-12 – Journalism / Photojournalism, Digital Media, Graphic Design, Newspaper Production
Juan Alvarado (TX) Grade 9-12 – English/ELA.

Read more about the six new ambassadors here.

TX ambassador David Doerr presented his first news literacy event in October at The Texas Association of Journalism Educators Fall Conference in San Antonio, Texas.
PA Ambassador Deborah Domingues-Murphy hosted a table at the Allegheny Intermediate Unit Social Studies Conference in October.
NLP’s news literacy ambassador and librarian media specialist K.C. Boyd was honored at the School Library Journal (SLJ) Leadership Summit as the school librarian of the year in November.

You can now find out more about PitchIt!, NLP’s student essay contest series, on our new landing page! Educators can use this resource for contest details, updates on contests cities, winners, insights from other educators, and more.
- The PitchIt! Miami student essay contest is open and will be live until May 12, 2023. The contest was recently launched district-wide by Miami-Dade County Public Schools.

We are now hosting NewsLitNation Happy Hour engagement events at various conferences throughout the year to connect ambassadors with NLP staff in-person, and to recruit more educators to NewsLitNation.
- Happy Hour events have been hosted at the SLJ Leadership Summit, the National Council for the Social Studies Conference, and more, with over 100 educators engaged.

You can now join over 900 fellow educators on the NewsLitNation Facebook Group!

Texas Educator, Celaina Huckeba

Ohio ambassador Jocelyn Burlew

Partnership Spotlight

NLP’s Senior Manager of Educator Professional Learning Alexa Volland and Senior Manager of Education Partnerships (East Coast) Brittney Smith held a virtual professional development training for about 70 principals and assistant principals from Community School District 10 in the Bronx, New York, which serves 57 schools K-12.
NLP partnered with Senior Planet from AARP and the National Institute for Civil Discourse to help the public survive Thanksgiving with the webinar, Productive conversations without confrontation. This virtual event had over 500 attendees!
In December, NLP held a NewsLitCamp®, our professional learning event where teachers, librarians and other educators across all subjects connect directly with journalists and hone their ability to teach students how to sort fact from fiction. The event in Philadelphia was co-hosted with WHYY and The Philadelphia Inquirer.
NLP’s Senior Manager of Community Learning DeMario Phipps-Smith traveled to Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida for a full-day training for instructors at the Non-Commissioned Officers Academy.
DeMario is also cultivating NLP’s renewed relationship with Urban Rural Action.
We have new partnerships in the works! These developing relationships include Sacramento County Office of Education, Ohio Department of Education, Atlanta Public Schools, New Jersey Department of Education, Spencer School District (IA), Alabama Department of Education, Cleveland, and Ohio Catholic Schools.

Media Literacy Education Landscape: Updates and Movement Wins

Through a partnership with Media Literacy Now, NLP receives monthly reports that provide a status update for all bills and laws related to media literacy, news literacy and digital citizenship in each state and at the federal level.

Current Landscape Snapshot

States mandating some form of media literacy education prior to graduation (Tier 1): Illinois, Texas, New Jersey

States currently providing funding for media literacy education (Tier 2): Colorado, New Mexico, Hawaii, California, Pennsylvania, Utah, Iowa, Florida, Ohio, Washington, Connecticut, and Michigan

Other states with statutes encouraging media literacy: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Washington

Movement wins

New Jersey is now a Tier 1 focus among our priority educator engagement states!

This means that New Jersey schools will mandate some form of media literacy education prior to graduation.

New Jersey moved up in our ranks in late November when Governor Phil Murphy signed bill S588, making it the first state in the U.S. to mandate media literacy curriculums from kindergarten through grade 12.

“This bill ensures that 1.3 million public school students in New Jersey will be better prepared for life beyond school with key skills that help them with lifelong learning, civic participation, and work skills,” said Olga Polites, leader, New Jersey Chapter of Media Literacy Now and NLP partner.

Ebonee Rice, NLP’s senior vice president of educator engagement, applauded the development. “It is so important that students are equipped to confidently navigate today’s information landscape, and this is a great first step.”

June – August 2022

Each quarter, through these updates, we’ll keep you in tune with the work our network of educators is doing and how that work is shifting the media literacy education landscape across the U.S. to create a future founded on facts.

Our community of invested supporters makes NLP ’s work both inside and outside of the classroom possible. And our stakeholders’ commitment and interest allow us to continue to impact the emerging media literacy movement and fuel an achievable national initiative that equips people of all backgrounds for active civic life

Movement Builders in the Field

NLP’s NewsLitNation News Literacy Ambassadors and district partners defend democracy and promote news literacy in their classrooms and at the school district level.