Lookout In The Classroom is serving more than half of Santa Cruz County’s 12,000 high school students – reaching throughout the area’s 10 school districts. This innovative program includes free access for public high school students, educators and college students as well. We also engage those in education with workshops and curriculum on media literacy, an annual scholarship contest, weekly Educator Alerts and other highly useful and tailored curriculum. The big idea: make local news more visible and easier to access every day in our schools.
FREE ACCESS to Lookout Santa Cruz: Students and educators can sign up for a yearlong, free membership to Lookout. Upon registration students will receive full access to Lookout’s robust local news coverage and newsletters.
Santa Cruz County high school students: Sign up here.
Santa Cruz County highschool educators: Sign up here.
UC Santa Cruz students: Sign up here, enter your .edu email address to complete your registration
Introducing Lookout for Teachers
Lookout in the Classroom works to connect students with current events, develop media literacy skills, and help them engage meaningfully with their community. Through this work, one thing has become clear: teacher engagement is the key to successfully using local news in the classroom. At the heart of the next phase of Lookout in the Classroom (LOIC) is a simple, powerful idea: support teachers first, and the impact ripples outward—to students, classrooms, and entire communities.
This teacher-forward initiative gives every middle and high school educator full access to Lookout Local’s trusted local journalism, plus a robust weekly stream of curriculum-aligned, classroom-ready tools—quizzes, guides, lesson plans, and media literacy activities. Donors cover the cost—$160 per teacher per year—recognizing the vital role educators play in developing informed, civically engaged students.
In every community, teachers do the hard work of educating our kids and imparting life skills. Their jobs are often challenging, and that’s more true today than in the past. Let’s reward teachers with the gift of local connection – and see them pay it forward every day with their students.
The result? Students gain critical media skills. Teachers gain trusted tools. Lookout gains loyal new readers. Everyone wins.
We are now seeking philanthropic sponsors to underwrite this community-building initiative. We aim to start a public campaign and establishing an early (perhaps matching) grant. We’d like that grant to equal one-half of the needed total, or $65,000.
Contact Ken Doctor, Lookout Local Founder at ken@lookoutlocal.com for more details.
A note from Faris Sabbah:
“Lookout represents a key partner to help us in our work towards critical thinking and helping our students feel a sense of relevance. They’ve started a journalism scholarship. They offer quizzes and instructional materials for teachers to use that really adheres to California standards. It helps connect students to the community and they have created a space for students to be able to express themselves and to publish their content.” Faris Sabbah, Santa Cruz County’s superintendent of schools
Lookout in the Classroom is proudly supported by:
The Lookout Journalism Scholarship
Showcase your writing skills and uncover the unsung heroes in your community. The top 10 stories will be published on Lookout and the authors of the top three stories will each receive a $500 scholarship for an educational purchase. Learn more and take the first step towards a scholarship and a brighter future!
Donate to our Lookout in the Classroom Fund and help us expand our student media literacy and civic engagement initiative
Donors make free student membership possible. They know that both old-fashioned civics and modern media literacy have never been more essential, and they support getting fact-based, trustworthy local news to students with their tax-deductible donations.
Your support can do so much! New funding provides access to many more students and teachers and helps us engage deeper with our students and reach farther across the county. Here are some examples of what your money can provide:
$20 Access for one local high school student
$100 Access for one local high school teacher
$500 An in-classroom workshop with a journalist
$1500 Our student journalism scholarship contest prize for 3 students
Please help us bring the students of today (and voters of tomorrow) into Santa Cruz County’s civic conversation – around factual and discussable local news – with the guidance of good teachers. Donate via the buttons above or here.
You may make your gift securely online by hitting the donate button or by sending a check made out to our nonprofit partner, Local Media Foundation. Checks should include “Lookout in the Classroom Santa Cruz County” on the memo line.
All gifts are tax-deductible.
Checks can be mailed to:
Local Media Foundation P.O. Box 85015 Chicago, IL 60689-5033
For any questions, please contact:
Ken Doctor, Founder & CEO of Lookout Local ken@lookoutlocal.com
Lookout’s program is designed to make sure the people of Santa Cruz County have access to a steady stream of trusted, civic-essential news and information to support the local democracy.
Donations to Local Media Foundation for this program are tax-deductible to the extent of the law. Please consult a tax adviser for details. No goods or services are provided in exchange for donations. This program is administered by Local Media Foundation, tax ID #36-4427750, a Section 501(c)(3) charitable trust affiliated with Local Media Association.About Lookout’s Student Engagement Program
We’d like to thank our initial donors:
Rowland & Pat Rebele, Linda Peterson, Carol & Doug Melamed, The UCSC Foundation Board Opportunity Fund, Google News Initiative, Santa Cruz Community Credit Union, Turnip Top Foundation
Each has generously supported delivering the news — local news — to Santa Cruz County’s students. Yet, our work is just beginning.
About the Launch of our Student Engagement Initiative
A note from Ken Doctor, August 2023:
It’s my pleasure to introduce you to Jamie Garfield, Lookout’s new Director of Student Engagement & Membership. An alum of six years of wide-ranging student and community outreach at Santa Cruz’s Museum of Art & History, Jamie now leads this model program.
“We want to deliver the great work of my Lookout colleagues to all the students in the county, and we’d like to see it used in the classrooms, week by week,” says Jamie. “I’m reaching out to students, student groups, faculty and staff as fast as I can to spread the word about our new program. We want to see students get the news and use it to better understand, and get involved, in our community.”
Jamie — who is reachable at jamie@lookoutlocal.com — is now focusing on both the UCSC and Cabrillo campuses. But, she’s got an eye on the wider goal: Getting Lookout to all college and high school students — that’s 42,000 in total, one of every seven Santa Cruz County residents — in the county.
“We’re halfway funded to provide all Pajaro Valley Unified School District students with Lookout, and we hope to complete that soon,” says Jamie. Then, we plan to complete the student program throughout the county.
Already, one PVUSD school is using Lookout every week.
When Santa Cruz Community Credit Union’s (SCCCU) Katie Fairbairn, its Vice President of Communications and organizational development, heard about Lookout’s program, she seized a new opportunity. The credit union has supported the charter Diamond Tech Institute in Watsonville, and Katie offered new support for the Lookout membership. SCCCU CEO Beth Carr had established support for Diamond Tech years ago and is one of its strongest advocates.
Diamond Tech principal Marci Keller immediately saw its value and within two weeks, Diamond Tech students and teachers are already finding multiple ways to integrate local news into their curriculum.
That’s the model that Lookout intends with our ambitious new program: First student access. Then, curriculum integration as educators see fit. Then, a range of programs, involving students in media creation and incorporating student voices into the fabric of Lookout.
How you can help: We’d love to talk with additional individuals and businesses enthusiastic about the Student Engagement program. Support of the program can be tax-deductible as well. Please contact either Jamie or me to get more information and share ideas on how to further enlarge the program.
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