An elementary school teacher in South Carolina’s Lowcountry is using non-fiction magazines to promote the joys of reading and teach her students real-world concepts. Mrs. Amy Wagner, a fifth-grade teacher in Berkeley County, was recently highlighted by WCSC (Live5News) for her success in the classroom.
“When we were kids, you know, you could do a newspaper project or you could go read a newspaper and find a current event article,” she told the news channel. “We just don’t have that in this day and age.”
Mrs. Wager hits on something poignant: the benefits of physical media and the advantage it can have for learning. In the age of iPads, kindles and laptops, there’s something both refreshing and nostalgic about reading a printed magazine.
Mrs. Wager has been buying magazines out of her own pocket and with the help of a donation platform called DonorsChoose, a service similar GoFundMe but geared towards students and classroom expenses.
“My students love to read….but they have very few opportunities to read non-fiction texts,” Mrs. Wager wrote on her donation page. “Scholastic magazines are a great way for my students to practice reading non-fiction texts in a fun and engaging way.”
Her focus on physical media is symbolic of a broader trend in education with more teachers returning to pen and paper assignments to mitigate the impacts of AI on learning. I explored this topic in a summary last year.
You find WCSC’s full story on Mrs. Wager here.