Virginia high school teacher named NLP’s 2020 Educator of the Year

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Virginia educator Patricia Hunt is the recipient of NLP’s inaugural Educator of the Year Award for the dedication and innovation she brings to her teaching of news literacy — an essential life skill for the digital age — and for her wider advocacy of news literacy education.

Hunt, who teaches 12th grade government courses at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va., first learned about NLP from a Maryland colleague in 2011, before NLP’s classroom program was active in Virginia. Hunt borrowed the NLP classroom guide from her colleague to use in her courses.

“Patricia has set the gold standard as the first recipient of our educator of the year award,” said Alan C. Miller, NLP founder and CEO.  “She became an early adopter of our Checkology^® virtual classroom e-learning platform when it was launched in 2016 and has made it an integral part of her government class. She’s also developed engaging activities to enhance her students’ ability to learn and apply news literacy skills, and her passion for improving the well-being of her students is contagious and inspiring. We are so proud to give her this award and spotlight her as a champion for news literacy education.”

Watch the video of Hunt receiving her award:

Soon after Hunt began using Checkology, NPR visited her classroom and made it the focus of this piece, The Classroom Where Fake News Fails. Hunt has also hosted classroom visits from several other news outlets. These include CNN.com; ABC News.com; HBO; WRC-TV; NHK, Japan’s public television station, and Czech public television. (Watch an NLP video about Checkology’s impact in her classroom.)

“My goal as an educator is to give students the tools that they need to become lifelong learners. My hope would be for them to continue listening to the news, to continue checking their news feed against other news feeds, to stop and pause before sharing. Checkology is the best tool I’ve found to meet that goal,” Hunt said.