Amy Owens, an English teacher at Brunswick High School, aims to find a way to encourage her students to read in class every day.
The newspaper, which is delivered to Owens’ classroom twice a week through the Newspaper in Education program, is among many tools in her toolbox.
“I always want it as an option for them,” she said. “They’re so in the digital world, they’re not used to something like a newspaper.”
On a recent class day, Owen’s students looked over the newspaper’s index, which indicates the various components of the newspaper and where to find them, before turning to the community calendar.
“When we’re looking for what’s happening in our community, where do we look for that?” Owens asked. “Where do we find our community calendar? Just look at the top. 5A.”
They discussed upcoming events and opportunities to get out in the community.
Owens directed the class next to the back pages, where the classifieds are located.
“This is the beauty of the paper,” she told the students. “You don’t have to read everything in order. You can skip around and read. You can look at just parts of it and not read the whole page. You can just read a section fo it and find the information that you want.”
No matter what parts a reader may find most interesting, Owens said, there’s value in reading the local newspaper.
“You should read the paper, it’s important,” she said. “It tells you things that are going on locally, things that re going on nationally, the most important information that you might want to know.”
The class looked over the comics section and the horoscopes, reading theirs aloud.
This kind of unique engagement with reading is one of many that Owens employs in her classroom. She’s used the newspaper for many years of her 25-year career as an educator to talk with students about current events and to offer them an outlet for reading.
“The newspaper is at a fifth-grade lexile, and I have some in here who are below that, so it’s a good way to use vocabulary and explain vocabulary,” she said. “It also gets them more involved in their community.”