Pulitzer Center Update

News Bites and Lesson Plan of the Week: Support for Syrian Refugees

Nagham Al Jabouli, 5, waits for her father to walk her through a snowstorm to her first day of school in Canada. She is wearing snow pants, snow boots, and heavy ski mitts for the first time. Image by Robin Shulman. Canada, 2016.

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Dear Educators,

This week's lesson plans introduce students to the process of resettlement for Syrian refugees around the world. The lessons feature reporting from grantee Robin Shulman in a cover story for the Washington Post Magazine and from Mark Johnson and Mark Hoffman for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Shulman covers the Canadian system that allows private sponsorship of Syrian refugees, while Johnson and Hoffman follow a Syrian doctor living in Wisconsin who leads a group of American volunteers to aid Syrian refugees in Jordan.

News Bite Lesson: Community Support for Syrian Refugees

This week's News Bite lesson asks students to analyze how Robin Shulman balances her use of narrative and fact to tell the stories of Syrian refugees as they resettle in Canada. An extension activity asks students to use Shulman's reporting to develop their own persuasive letters advocating for programs to support Syrian refugees in their own communities.

Featured Lesson: Healing for Refugees from Syria

This week's featured lesson explores the global refugee crisis and the issue of responsibility to the international community with a lesson plan that analyzes reporting by Mark Johnson and Mark Hoffman on the resettlement of Syrian refugees in Jordan. This lesson pushes students to think about an author's point of view, the purpose of their article, and how reporting uses rhetoric to advance different aims.

Education News: Washington Yu Ying Public Charter School Student Reporting & Photography is Up!

Last month, fifth graders from Washington Yu Ying Public Charter School took notebooks, cameras and skills they developed with inspiration from Paul Salopek's Out of Eden Walk to interview passerby in Dupont Cirlce in an exercise of "slow journalism."

The students were participating in a three-day workshop on slow journalism, which you can introduce to your own classroom using this lesson plan.

View the students' photographs in Dupont Circle here, and their photography from reporting around their own school here.

If you are interested in hosting a reporting workshop at your school to explore using Pulitzer Center resources in your curriculum, please contact [email protected].

Featured Project of the Week: "Everyday Africa: A Photographer's Toolkit"

Click here to learn more about journalist Peter DeCampo and his project about everyday life in Africa. Create your own lesson plan using Peter's work with our Lesson Builder.

If you are interested in hosting a professional development at your school to explore using Pulitzer Center resources in your curriculum, please contact [email protected].

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