Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra feature stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write a 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: School Bells Ring For Children Displaced By Hurricane Katrina, 09/07/05
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec05/katrina_9-07.html

Initiating Questions:

1. What have you heard about Hurricane Katrina? What happened?

2. Where is the Gulf Coast? Where is New Orleans?

3. What are the most important aspects of your daily routine? Why are they important?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. What happened when Katrica struck the Gulf Coast last month? What have government officials encouraged families to do with their children?

When Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast last month, hundreds of thousands of people had to flee their homes with little or no belongings. Within hours, they lost any semblance to normal lives. Now, government officials are encouraging evacuated families to enroll their children in the nearest schools.

"The children in our state are too important, and we're not going to let anything prevent us from moving forward," Jeanne Burns, an associate state commissioner for teacher education, told Education Week.

2. How long before New Orleans schools plan to open again? How many children have been impacted by the disaster? Where will they go to school now?

Schools in New Orleans, Louisiana are expected to be closed for several months. An estimated 125,000 New Orleans children will need schooling.

Schools from around the country have offered help. The Houston Independent School District in Texas has welcomed close to 900 students and expects to enroll 5,000 more. Other students are entering classrooms as far away as Detroit, Ohio, Georgia and Wisconsin.

3. How do students feel about these school changes?

Some students have met new friends and look forward to a new school.

"I'm pretty open, so that will make it better, and we've already met a lot of nice people," Paige DiMacco, a senior from suburban New Orleans who will be starting school in Arkansas, told the Seattle-Post Intelligencer.

But for many, the changes have caused great stress, and students are anxiously awaiting the day that they can return home.

"I'm shy and I have to start at a new school," Dedrionne McCarvy, 12, who was registering at a center in Baton Rouge, La., told The Charlotte Observer.

"I'm gonna have to make new friends, but then I'm gonna have to go back to New Orleans, once they flush the water out."

4. Who is going to pay for the cost of educating the Katrina evacuees?

The federal government is creating a plan to help schools pay for the extra supplies, textbooks, classroom space, uniforms and additional teachers, but many school leaders say their first priority is getting all students into classes.

"I think districts will keep taking the students and figure it all out later," Paul Houston, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, told the Seattle-Post Intelligencer.

5. Why is it important that people feel a sense of normalcy?

Mental health and disaster relief experts say that creating a sense of normalcy is essential to rebuilding lives.

This was especially important after last year's Asian tsunami displaced hundreds of thousands of school-age children, explained Save the Children spokesman Mike Kiernan, whose organization hopes to open after-school programs for Katrina's victims.

"We want to create an environment as close to normal as possible - where kids are doing things -- riding a bike, throwing a football, drawing, etc. -- fun activities that allow kids to process what they've experienced," Kiernan said.

Parents hope familiar school routines will help children recover from the terrifying ordeal of escaping the storm and floods.

"They'll have to concentrate on their books, homework and lessons, instead of the water we walked through," Brandon Roberts, parent of a New Orleans kindergartner, told The Charlotte Observer.

6. How are parents reacting to the Katrina disaster?

Safe places for children are essential, especially when their parents are struggling to find jobs, homes and to reconnect with families and friends, experts say.

"I'm depressed, I'm stressed out," Selika Thomas, a 30-year-old mother of two who worked as a hotel chef in New Orleans, told the Associated Press.

"It all happened so fast. We see this every day, homeless people living in the streets, but I didn't expect it to happen to our whole city."

7. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has set up a Web site to help reunite missing children and adults. How many children are still missing? What is being done to help connect them with their families?

According to a NCMEC spokeswoman, more than 729 children across the region have been reported as missing due to Katrina as of Sept. 6.

Families looking to be reunited can call the NCMEC Katrina Hotline at 1-888-544-5475 for more information.

Volunteers armed with mobile phones, digital cameras and scanners are fanning out across the region to help families find images for the Web site.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. Hurricane Katrina displaced hundreds of thousands of people from across the Gulf Coast region, what efforts are being made in your community to help them? What can you do to help?

2. According to the article, going to school and having a routine are important parts of a normal life. What is your routine? How would you feel if you had to suddenly leave your home and all your belongings and evacuate to a new city? What obstacles would you face? How might you overcome them?

Write a 300-500 word essay on either of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra (extra@newshour.org). Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.