Using Living Newspapers to Bring World Events into the Classroom

Civic Engagement through Theater

The current project builds on the United States Federal Theater project. This project was created under the 1930s New Deal to put unemployed researchers, journalists and performers. They worked to create theater pieces about events of the day. Today’s Living Newspapers take place in the classroom where the Living Newspaper—literally, a newspaper brought to life—engages students in conducting research on current events, creative writing and staging public performances. Students gain a greater ability to understand and affect the world around them through an interdisciplinary, hands-on, collaborative project. Ultimately, the goal is to take action. By simply being aware of injustices, audience members can actually taking steps to do something to change the situation.

UT Austin’s Living Newspapers

This program was re-created by the Humanities Institute at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin. In partnership with the Performance as Public Practice Program, Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, and the Theatre Action Project, the Living Newspapers across Disciplines program illustrates the power of connecting students to the world around them. It illustrates the power of interdisciplinary and interactive approaches. Living Newspapers also provides teachers with the tools to guide their students through a Living Newspaper unit in classrooms as diverse as English, Social Studies, Spanish, Astronomy or Theater Arts.

Participating teachers receive the Living Newspaper Resource Guide. It contains TEKS-aligned model lesson plans, evaluative tools, and resources[NP1] , and the ongoing support of a program team comprised of subject specialists, UT Austin graduate and professional students, and UT Austin faculty. In addition to the academic skills emphasized by the program, students also benefit from relationships with graduate and professional student guest teachers. They receive exposure to an array of post-secondary school opportunities and careers in the humanities, higher education, law, public affairs and the arts.

Student-Driven Learning

In creating Living Newspapers, students choose their own topics. This element has been critical to the success of the program. Also critical have been the flexibility of the curriculum and the creation of a program that could be adapted to a variety of classrooms and disciplines.

For example, classrooms across Central Texas Living Newspapers incorporated:

A foreign language project which focused their AP Spanish class on human rights issues in Latin America.

An AP economics class to help students think about the real life application of the theories they explored in class. Students made short films about topics ranging from the outsourcing of jobs to India, to piracy in the music and movie industry.

A public speaking class that offered a chance to get public speaking students comfortable talking in public about important issues.

A creative writing class where students wrote plays about contemporary issues of importance to them. These included topics ranging from gay marriage to arranged marriages.

An astronomy class to help students teach each other about the solar system.

A project on genocide in countries ranging from Bosnia to Darfur. As visuals, students sketched words such as Agony, Genocide, Fear and Death on their arms.

A theater piece, “Got Rights”, where students in Austin graphically illustrated the violations of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). They depicted 20 children struggling with issues such as child labor, the AIDS epidemic and juvenile detention.

Student Activism Sparked by Living Newspaper

As a direct result of her participation in “Got Rights”, one ninth-grade student deepened her involvement in the Invisible Children movement. She joined efforts to educate people about the 20,000 Ugandan children who have been kidnapped and forced to work as child soldiers. After incorporating the issue into the Living Newspaper, she organized screenings of a documentary on the issue at her school. Additionally, she held a benefit concert to raise money for the organization.

Success of this Tactic

In the course of its three year history, the Living Newspaper Project has reached approximately eighty Central Texas middle school, high school and community college teachers, as well as several hundred students. In August 2009, in an expansion of the Living Newspapers project beyond the academic year, a Summer Youth Performance Troupe started. This five-week summer workshop involved 16 middle and high school students in a five-week Forgotten Gateway immigration project at the Texas State History Museum.

Already there have been requests for the curriculum from Japan to Massachusetts. By giving students the freedom to choose subjects that interest them personally, the program encourages students to become leaders and activists on global issues from their own local community.

What we can learn from this Tactic:

The living newspapers approach relies on classroom teachers to engage students in an exploration of human rights issues. Teachers can play a significant role in helping students understand connections between their lives and human rights issues, and can be powerful allies in building a human rights-respecting culture. This tactic could also be used in the community to build interest and engagement in human rights. As the students select the topics that they are most passionate about, this tactic is widely adaptable to focus on diverse human rights issues around the world.