MaST Healthy Panther Post reporters created a comic strip focused on an empathetic duck. Logan Healthy Eagle students organized a school poetry contest after interviewing a former Philadelphia poet laureate. And a Catholic Partnership Schools Healthy Courier reporter addressed the poor conditions of sidewalks in his community in his school health newspaper and in a new Healthy NewsWorks film.
These are a few examples of how our reporters explored our theme, “Caring for Our Community and Ourselves,” during the 2023-24 school year.
“We have learned things like respect for our communities, swim safety, kindness, and so much more,” one seventh-grade reporter wrote in a year-end reflection. “Every topic we covered was very beneficial and useful. Everything we learned was great, which makes me believe that every student should have the opportunity to learn about it all.”
The reporter was one of 527 students who participated in our flagship Core Reporter Program. These students serve as staff members for their school health newspapers, and many also contributed to two By Kids, For Kids magazines focused on the Caring for Our Community theme. A smaller group created videos on the topic.
In all, more than 1,700 students participated in a Healthy NewsWorks program—a 20 percent increase over the 1,433 students the year before. Nearly 500 students took part in our Cub Reporter program, which guides children in kindergarten through third grade to produce articles and illustrations for a junior section of the newspaper. Of the 41 student-health newspapers created this year, 39 percent included a “Cub Corner” section.
More than 700 additional students got a taste of health journalism during “Special Lessons.” Topics included interviewing skills, stress reduction, and the health benefits of friendship. These lessons deepen Healthy NewsWorks’ impact in our schools.
Not only did kids benefit from our programming, so did their teachers. In surveys, all 13 responding partner teachers in our Core Program told us that they gained new skills that they can use in their classroom.
“Healthy NewsWorks has helped me with bringing important health topics into the classroom and has taught me about some important health topics. It has helped me with bringing more writing into my class and helped me guide students through the writing process,” wrote a fifth-grade teacher.
A fourth-grade teacher wrote: “I was able to start conducting more independent research projects as a result of Healthy NewsWorks and the specific skills my students learned.”
We worked with a total of 65 teachers in 73 classrooms this year. The newspapers produced by their reporters reached 8,000 students and staff members in Philadelphia, Camden, and Norristown schools.
In the year ahead, we hope to work with even more teachers in even more classrooms to reach 2,000 students with our unique programming.
