How teachers and journalists can join forces, and other CLEMI practices

Training is essential if teachers are to develop media literacy projects, on their own or with media professionals – which is why it is one of CLEMI’s top priorities. Each year, 30,000 teachers are trained in media literacy. We also facilitate media literacy actions in schools by creating links between teachers and journalists, thanks to a national team and a strong network of local academic coordinators.

A workshop with a journalist is co-constructed by him or her and the teacher, whether it takes place in a classroom or online. The key part of the preparation is the teacher outlining his or her media literacy project to the journalist, and explaining how it fits into the curriculum and the school’s global objectives. On the other hand, the journalist will explain how his or her own expertise and experiences could illustrate the project’s different pedagogical aspects. To help them during this process, CLEMI has produced a handbook and a media literacy classroom activity sheet in English.

Although fighting against fake news is important, it is only one component of media literacy, which is also about teaching critical thinking, helping to shape our common citizenship, and strengthening our democracies in an interconnected world. The Press and Media Week at School offers pupils these opportunities. In 2021, more than 4,000,000 pupils and 250,000 teachers were involved in this event, as well as 1.800 media partners. We also organised a fruitful webinar with eTwinning members to focus on media literacy challenges at the European level.

Choukri Kouas is head of communications at CLEMI.