Newsroom to Classroom

Newsroom to Classroom visits

Invite a journalist to share their expertise and experience with your students

Meeting the journalists behind the headlines and bylines is a powerful news literacy learning experience for students.

Take advantage of your Checkology account to connect with editors, reporters and other news media professionals.

More than 150 journalist volunteers listed in our directory are ready and eager to meet with your students in person or virtually. These visits are an opportunity for students to get news literacy instruction straight from the experts on dozens of topics, including misinformation, social media issues, the watchdog role of the press, the standards of quality journalism, the First Amendment and more.

And, did we mention, it’s free?

About journalist visits

Newsroom to Classroom journalist visits are an opportunity for students to get news literacy instruction straight from the experts. Our journalist volunteers have visited classrooms all over the United States and the world, from elementary to college-level and across many subject areas, including ELA, social studies, science and library/media studies. Participating journalists understand that this is a guest lesson — not a “career day” type of talk.

Newsroom to Classroom in action

Here's how educators have used the Newsroom to Classroom program:

Environmental reporting

A middle school class invited an environmental reporter for a virtual visit to learn how he covers issues related to climate and the environment, and they discussed how to find quality information on these topics.

Press freedom

A college English class focusing on press freedom invited a journalist to share about his experience working in North Korea.

Editorial cartooning

A middle school humanities and civics teacher invited an editorial cartoonist for a virtual visit after her students completed the lesson “Power in Art: The Watchdog Role of Editorial Cartoonists” and created their own editorial cartoons.

Ask me anything

A high school English teacher invited several journalists throughout the school year to give students the opportunity to ask journalists questions about media literacy topics they were covering in class.

How do I schedule a visit?

Checkology makes it easy for educators to request a visit from a Checkology journalist volunteer.

Explore the directory in the “Journalist Visits” tab. Search or filter results by area of expertise, languages spoken and location to find the right journalist for your classroom.

After you find a journalist, click the “invite” button on their Checkology profile to fill out a visit request form.

How do I prepare for a visit?

Journalist visits are interactive and conversational news literacy lessons. We encourage you to work directly with journalist volunteers on the learning objective and key concepts for the visit.

The best way to ensure a successful visit that meets your learning objective for the day is to do some pre-visit planning with the journalist volunteer. Be sure to let the journalist know what news literacy topics your class is learning about and if your students will have completed any Checkology lessons in advance of the visit.

Preview the Journalist visit planning sheet.

“The opportunities to meet with journalists are awesome.”

Patricia Meegan, teacher, 8th Grade Humanities

Interested but still have questions?

Learn more in our NLP Education Help Center.