The 2019 Washington State legislature has allocated $150,000 in state funds for the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) to establish a K-12 media literacy grant program in 2019–2020. Action for Media Literacy Education is pleased to announce this news as another media literacy first for Washington State and the nation.
These funds will be awarded in September through a competitive grant process. Six to ten school teams will receive grants to develop and share openly-licensed curriculum units focused on three subject areas: social studies, English language arts, or health classes. A unique feature of these units is that they will be designed using a media literacy lens to address content commonly covered in one of these three subject areas.
Examples of ideas for curriculum units designed from a media literacy lens:
- Exploring media influence on teen perspectives concerning a particular health issue (e.g. teen pregnancy prevention)
- Analyzing and evaluating media sources that describe an important historical event
- Examining issues of copyright, fair use, and intellectual property as they apply to materials produced for an English language arts class
Submissions may come from a public school, district office, ESD, or a partnership between multiple educational partners. Only one proposal may be submitted per organization. Grant requests may not exceed $25,000; most awards are anticipated to be in the $15,000 range.
Grant application details and information will be available from OSPI in late August, 2019. For more information, contact Dennis Small: dennis.small@k12.wa.us or (360) 725-6384.