Just in time for #throwbackthursday, Jackie Glasthal from our Classroom Magazines team is here with a guest post about those issues of Scholastic News and Weekly Reader that so many of us loved in elementary school. Take it away, Jackie!
Do you remember receiving Scholastic News or Weekly Reader in school when you were a kid? Turns out that a lot of today’s teachers do! That’s what we found out recently when we invited educators to share their fondest memories of the magazine. Reminiscences started pouring in almost immediately! In the first hour alone, almost 400 entries were posted on Scholastic Teachers Facebook page. Since then the number has continued to grow.
Many of the comments had a similar theme—the love of feeling “in the know” as a kid.
“I loved feeling grown up and reading articles like my parents, that I was able to talk to them about,” recalled one educator.
“Sharing the weekly current events with my parents at dinnertime made me feel like an adult,” another teacher wrote.
Some went so far as to say they credit the magazine with their lifelong love of learning, and of reading nonfiction texts. Others recalled it as a special pre-weekend treat.
“I looked forward to coming to school each Friday morning,” wrote a teacher from the City Invincible Charter School in Camden, NJ. “It was always on our desks. Morning routine was reading the articles and choosing a highlight or something we thought was really cool and then sharing it with the class.”
But for us, today’s SN team, perhaps most gratifying is how many of the teachers who posted are happy to pass on their love of the magazine to a new generation.
“My students love receiving these just as I did as a kid!” wrote one fifth-grade teacher from Shelby, North Carolina. “As a kid I just thought we were getting to not read the reading books, and read something fun,” she wrote. “Now I know that those teachers were doing a great thing by feeding our hungry minds great nonfiction texts!”
Want to see what other recollections about reading Scholastic News and Weekly Reader teachers chose to share? Check them out here, and be sure to add your own!
