When Sandy McGehee joined The Brownsville Herald as Newspapers in Education director almost 19 years ago, she didn’t know much about the newspaper business, but she knew newspapers were powerful.
When Sandy McGehee joined The Brownsville Herald as Newspapers in Education director almost 19 years ago, she didn’t know much about the newspaper business, but she knew newspapers were powerful.
The Chicago native had read them all her life, a habit she learned from her parents.
“I knew newspapers were a way to get information in a credible way,” she said. “Plus, I knew that newspapers were a powerful tool to use in education.”
When McGehee’s husband was hired as director of testing for the University of Texas at Brownsville and the couple relocated to the Rio Grande Valley, she also went to work for UTB, teaching a grant-funded UTB program, Project Mujer. Her students were displaced homemakers in their 30s, 40s and 50s, and McGehee was surprised how little they knew about their community.
“They had no idea,” she said. “They had never traveled out of the Valley for the most part. They didn’t even know what was happening in Brownsville, the community they lived in.”
Newspapers presented an obvious solution.
“I thought, what a wonderful way to connect my students to not only their local community but their global community, to know what’s happening in the world. So I would create assignments based on articles in the newspaper. We did the most amazing things.”
When the Herald advertised for an NIE director, McGehee applied and got the job. Once again to her surprise, she discovered that fewer than 30 local teachers were using newspapers in the classroom. Today, largely thanks to her efforts, more than 1,000 teachers use the print or e-edition of the Herald in the classroom.
A more complete version of this story is available on www.myBrownsvilleHerald.com
