New York City is the media capital of the world, yet barely 1 in 10 public schools has a student newspaper. Founded in 2019 by teachers who saw the power student journalism had to transform their own school communities and who recognize journalism as integral to broader educational equity, Students Disrupting’s mission is to bring student newspapers to EVERY high school in the city through training, advising and supporting students and their teachers.

While remote learning has forced us to change our approach to achieving our mission, Students Disrupting also sees this time as an opportunity to offer educators an easy-to-implement online newspaper curriculum which can benefit schools and students not only through engagement and authentic, student-centered learning, but by covering mandated skills and ultimately providing a reliable source of relevant information for disconnected school communities.

With the help of the Awesome Foundation grant, Students Disrupting is designing just such a remote-friendly, easy-to-implement curriculum that will empower students and teachers to start and sustain a student newspaper beginning this spring.

If you are a member of a school community — student, teacher, administrator or parent — interested in starting a newspaper at your school and learning more, contact us at outreach@studentsdisrupting.org so that Students Disrupting can help.

In addition, if you are an experienced journalist, journalism teacher, or even a journalism student interested in volunteering as a school-newspaper mentor, please reach out, as well, to outreach@studentsdisrupting.org to join our community of student journalism supporters.