Lookout in the Classroom: End of the 2023-24 school year highlights

Hi all, as the school year comes to a close I wanted to share with you some highlighted moments and projects we’ve worked on with our local educators. We look forward to continuing to grow this work and bring back these types of collabortions and resources in the year ahead.

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Here are some of our education highlights from this school year: 

Journalism scholarship

Our journalism scholarship was a huge success this year with 70-plus submissions! We read through every submission and chose 10 students whose stories would be published on our site. The top three students each got a $500 scholarship. 

NEXTies 2024

As a co-host to the NEXTies awards this year, we highlighted many amazing people in our education system! The Giveback award went to Watsonville High School counselor Daisy Nuñez; the Educator award went to Pajaro Valley Unified School District educator Ruby Vasquez; the Young Leader award went to Aptos High student Iman Moshari; the Student-Athlete award went to the Soquel High football team. Congrats!

Career panels & fairs

This year we partnered with Your Future is Our Business and participated in various career fairs and panels around the county. It was a great experience to talk with high school students about journalism and careers in writing and business. 

Classroom visits

This school year we visited classrooms around the county leading various workshops. We led a series of visits about our journalism scholarship, helping students with their applications. We led a few workshops highlighting journalism and media literacy and we also got to talk to a few classes about the role of the media in elections. 

Stuff the Bus

Right before the school year started, we participated in United Way’s annual Stuff the Bus event, volunteering to help fill over 2,000 backpacks with necessary school supplies and literally “stuffing a school bus”! After the event, all the backpacks were transported to the County Office of Education and distributed to students and families for the start of the school year. 

Education Fellowship

We hosted our first education fellow this school year through UC Santa Cruz’s The Humanities Institute Fellowship Program. Our fellow was college junior Eetai Shwartz, who wants to be a high school history teacher. He worked on designing curriculum, leading class visits and more. You can see him in this photo reading a story to a group of third graders.

High School sports coverage

In his final roundup of the 2023-24 academic year, Thomas Frey looks at where Santa Cruz County stars across the high school sports landscape will be continuing their careers at the next level. Check out all the high school sports updates from this school year here.

Teacher resources from Lookout

• Educator Page: You can find more resources on our Educator Page, including a media literacy guide, specific new quizzes and in class opportunities.
• Current Event Discussion Guide: Our current event discussion guide is a great activity to engage with local news and can be used for any article, including the ones listed above.
  • Bilingual Current Event Discussion Guide (PDF)
  • Current Event Discussion Guide Lesson Plan (PDF)
• News quizzes: These quizzes test reading comprehension while getting students more informed on issues and happenings in the community. You can find all of them by clicking here.
• Reminder on student access: If any of your students are having trouble with their free access, have them sign up for their free student access with their personal email address with this link.

Teachers of Santa Cruz County: Thank you for all the hard work you do in the community and for supporting our educational programs, helping younger generations learn media literacy skills and become invested community members and democratic citizens.

If you have any questions or feedback, please email me — jamie@lookoutlocal.com