The article, titled “News You Can Use,” focuses on NLP’s kickoff and the first two weeks of its pilot at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland. It extensively quotes Mark Halperin, an editor-at-large and a senior political analyst at Time magazine, and Pierre Thomas, senior Justice Department correspondent for ABC News, who were featured at the kickoff event, along with several journalists who made presentations to AP government classes.
Aimed at elementary and secondary school teachers, Teacher Magazine reports on such issues as instruction, the school environment, classroom technology and curriculum. Its publisher, Education Week, describes its primary mission as helping “raise the level of awareness and understanding among professionals and the public of important issues in American education.” The Bethesda-based nonprofit organization says its publications average 1 million page views per month.
In NLP’s first two weeks at Whitman, a dozen journalist fellows made presentations to a total of 316 students in 10 AP government sections. The curriculum will be offered to an additional 197 students in seven sections of honors government classes later this spring.
Eric Schmitt, a national security reporter in the Washington bureau of The New York Times, told the magazine that he had a “great session” with Whitman students and was impressed by the quality of their questions. “They’d obviously been thinking through some of the same issues and dilemmas,” he said. “Issues like how credible our sources are, how do you corroborate information coming from different sources?”
Colin O’Brien, one of the three social studies teachers who taught NLP’s curriculum, said, “Student feedback has been very positive, and it’s a program I’m looking forward to next year.”
