Fall 2008 Living Newspaper Activities

The Living Newspaper Project had a very successful Fall 2008 semester, with several LN firsts. Brian McDonough and Heidi Klein's Advanced Placement Spanish classes at West Wood High school undertook the first foreign language Living Newspaper project. Tiara Naputi, an experienced and bilingual Graduate Consultant, worked extensively with the classes on projects centering on Human Rights issues in Latin America. Reflecting on the experience, Tiara said, "I think that future projects geared towards human rights issues in Latin America are necessary and timely projects...regardless of the language of the performances, everyone involved in the project gained insight into some historical and contemporary human rights issues in an area of the world that deserves more attention in projects such as these." In another Living Newspaper first, Stephen Bratteng's astronomy class used the living newspaper form to learn and to teach each other about our solar system.

Patrick Schmidt, a returning LN teacher at Round Rock High School, lead his creative writing class in Living Newspaper projects on gay marriage and arranged marriage with the help of Graduate Consultants Katelyn Wood and Rawan Arar. Malhaz Jibladze, now on his fourth LN project at AISD's Liberal Arts and Science Academy, worked with Graduate Consultants Artina Hunter and Shu Yang to craft video projects on a wide variety of human rights subjects. Artina also worked with Angie Andrade at Travis Early College High School in San Antonio to create a series of Living Newspaper performances around issues of immigration, human smuggling and bilingual education.

In other LN news, we mourn the passing of Dr. Margaret Woodruff-Wieding, a founding member of the LN team (please see photo inset). On happier note, Ann David, the LN Teacher Liaison, welcomed twin boys, Jack and David, into her family in November. Keep an eye out for upcoming program development, as we are still exploring the possibility of revising and publishing the resource guide over the course of the next couple of years.