Howe Newspaper Team

The Newspaper Team evolved out of the interest in developing new and engaging ways of improving literacy instruction and the school's application to the Chicago Public Schools to become a Writing Academy. The school participated in a summer writing institute, led by Zoe Keithley, a writing consultant from the Chicago Teachers' Center, in the Summer of 1995. The writing institute was a huge success with 26 staff members participating, including teachers, the principal, and several of the Career Service personnel who work as classroom aides. After the writing institute, the school discussed the possibility of creating a bi-annual school literary magazine. When presented to the larger group, teachers at Howe were more interested in developing a school newspaper.

Zoe Keithley connected the team with the publisher/editor of a newspaper, Ed Eusebio, to consult with the team on the logistics of getting a desktop published school newspaper to press. The team was shown how to use Adobe PageMaker® as well as how to lay out the text and photos for printing.

They took these skills and started production of the first issue of the paper. Click here to see a sample of student work from the school paper.

Lois Shikami, Doris Monti, and Ed Eusebio gather around a PowerBook as Jenifer Bruce and Mary Beth Burke look on

The team was joined by Sandra Styer, their Northeastern Illinois University partner, and together the team developed a Newspaper Curriculum Guide for use by teachers in integrating writing activities into their curriculum which would result in work which would be suitable for the school newspaper.

One teacher on the newspaper team, Florence Brewer, developed a classroom newspaper with her third grade classroom.

Click here to learn how the newspaper team presented the school newspaper project to the rest of the staff at Howe school