New Mexico educators look to expand news literacy beyond their district

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Carol McCarthy

Joel Hutchinson and Josefina Miller at a News Literacy District Fellowship retreat.

For years, educators have had a front-row seat to the often-troubling impacts of the information technology revolution on their teaching and on young people. To help ensure their students can thrive in a world where misinformation pollutes a relentless stream of online content, a team of educators in Las Cruces, New Mexico, turned to the News Literacy Project.

“Media technology is shifting far faster than we can keep up with it. Most students are getting news from TikTok and other ‘news’ sources. This was driving our thinking,” said Joel Hutchinson, secondary English language arts content specialist for Las Cruces public schools, a district with 25,000 students.

In 2021, Hutchinson, secondary Social Studies Content Specialist Jamie Patterson, and middle school English language arts Content Lead Josefina Miller applied to NLP’s News Literacy District Fellowship program. They were accepted into the inaugural cohort in 2022.

During the two-year fellowship, districts partner with NLP to develop and implement innovative, sustainable initiatives to embed news and media literacy education in their schools. Shaelynn Farnsworth, director of the program, credits the Las Cruces team with involving cross-curricular leaders and support staff to tackle the challenge. “Right from day one they met regularly and built a plan. They are of one of our strongest fellowship districts and are a model for the state.”

The educators consider news literacy instruction an educational imperative and believe a lack of news literacy skills disempowers students. “It’s a necessity. We need to start as early as possible because we know that our students have access to all forms of technology at very early ages,” Miller said.

It starts with the teachers

Patterson noted how her son, age 5, likes to watch videos of tornadoes on YouTube and can’t tell what is fake and what isn’t. “It was a big ‘Aha!’ moment for me. He hasn’t even started school yet, and he’s already seeing these videos and everything else, and they’re forming what he understands about the world. And that’s a problem.”

But before they could roll out news literacy instruction, the team needed to provide teachers with the support to integrate it in their classrooms. They piloted professional development with a group of high school ELA and social studies educators, building much of the curriculum around NLP’s signature digital learning platform, Checkology^®.

“We have teacher leaders who experimented and tried things out, and they’re now the ones that are helping us grow the program over the next few years,” Patterson said.

Las Cruces educators Megan Belch and Chelsea Lester participate in a critical observation exercise to vet the legitimacy of an image and its use at a professional learning event.

A poster created by a Las Cruces educator at a professional learning event.

The fellowship gave the educators the time and resources to focus and plan each step of the process, Hutchinson said.

“Because we had a preview with the pilot and the feedback from our colleagues, we can trickle down the skills from secondary level into middle school,” eventually incorporating news literacy instruction into elementary school, Miller noted.

News literacy instruction has been implemented in all Principals of Democracy classes, a course for upper grade levels, and it’s been written into the social studies curriculum guide for seniors. Students are introduced to news literacy at the start of the school year, and it is woven into class instruction throughout the year, so concepts are constantly reinforced.

Looking beyond their borders

What also sets the Las Cruces fellows apart is their vision of establishing news literacy education as a priority for all students in New Mexico, Farnsworth said. “They are working at the regional and state levels to help inform legislative decisions.”

And the educators hope to continue to advocate for news literacy at home while also assisting other districts as participants in NLP’s News Literacy District Fellowship Alumni program.

To have a meaningful impact, this work can’t start soon enough, the educators say. “What success would look like is to see this as a common practice, just part of the conversation. If we want to prepare kids for tomorrow, you’ve got to be thinking about tomorrow,” Patterson said.