NLP Annual Report FY24 - Report - Page 13
Cohort 1
ALUMNI (2022-2024)
Utah’s Canyons School District:
Creating a professional learning
model to implement required civics
education legislation
In March 2022, Utah passed legislation requiring
civics education that included an information literacy
component. That same year the Canyons School District
was accepted into cohort 1, the inaugural cohort of the
program. As Gretchen Zaitzeff, the district’s library media
specialist, shared, “We were already in discussion about
how to improve information literacy, and NLP was an
obvious choice for the partner.”
Members of the Canyons School District felt that
professional development for their educators was the best
place to start. In the 昀椀rst year, they worked with 110 middle
and high school educators in social studies and English
language arts, as well as teacher librarians and instructional
coaches. The response to the 昀椀rst year was overwhelmingly
positive. Teachers read ahead in coursework and shared
resources in school and with their families.
UTAH
Location: Sandy, UT
“This needs to be something built with a structure for
sustaining it because this is essential to saving democracy,”
Jodi Ide, a high school social studies specialist, said.
Number of schools:
41 traditional,
6 specialized/programs
Lesli Morris, the high school English language arts
specialist and a member of the district’s information
literacy team, agreed. “Our democracy will not survive if
our citizens are not making accurate, informed decisions,”
she said. “People act on the information they have. If they
have poor information, their decisions might be poor.”
Number of students: 34,000+
In the second year of the fellowship, secondary educators
in all disciplines participated. As the district enters the
fellowship’s alumni program this school year, it will expand
to include elementary educators.
It helped that the district has a strong supporter at the Utah
Department of Education in Davina Sauthoff, library media
specialist lead. Sauthoff said the district’s approach sets
it apart. “I love how Canyons is building the capacity of
information literacy skills with all educators, not just librarians
or ELA teachers,” she said. “It’s a unique model to intentionally
include all content area teachers from kindergarten through
high school. I’m very excited about that.”
“I love how Canyons is
building the capacity
of information literacy
skills with all educators,
not just librarians or
ELA teachers.”
– Davina Sauthoff,
Utah Department of Education
library media specialist lead
THE NEWS LITERACY PROJECT
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