Often, teachers will write to us about one or two ways they’ve used The Times in their classrooms. But this idea, submitted by Susan Shatford, a library media specialist at Marblehead High School in Marblehead, Mass., is different.

It’s not just one lesson or unit, but a comprehensive overview of how The New York Times is used in almost every facet of her school. She tells us how she and others have integrated The Times into Marblehead’s curriculum, including in core subjects, elective classes and even the principal’s office.

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An Educational Partner

Marblehead High School has been using The New York Times for the past three years in a variety of disciplines. From science and social studies to English and English language learning, The Times is always a heavily utilized resource for our teachers and students.

As a library media specialist, I am fortunate to be able to collaborate with teachers and select resources that support their students’ learning. While state-funded databases have diminished over the years, Marblehead High School has been extremely grateful to have The New York Times as an educational partner. Our school is one of 4,000 public schools that has received a free subscription thanks to The Times’s Sponsor a Student Subscription program.

Here are some of the many ways teachers and students make use of that subscription across our school.

Science: Exploring Recent Developments in Biology

Each year, Brian Heenan and Tom Ericsson invite students in their freshman biology classes to select a research topic from a list of preapproved ones for their modern biology research project. These include subjects like genetically modified organisms, stem cell research, developments in cancer treatments, artificial organs, renewable energy, CRISPR and aging research, among others.

While the school library has books that provide important background information for their projects, students also need to find literature on the most up-to-date and cutting edge breakthroughs. Because fields like stem cell research and genetic engineering are constantly evolving, finding texts that have been published within the past year or two is vital.

To help students find resources like these, I always review the various databases that are available to them, and I show them how to search for their topic on nytimes.com so they can see the wealth of information that’s available.

“You would think that The New York Times has information on political and cultural articles and events,” Mr. Ericsson said, “but it is also an amazing resource for current developments in science.”

Social Studies: Finding Relevant, Reliable and Current Sources for Research Projects

Current Events Articles

Once a week in Stephen Venezia’s civics class, students are asked to bring in a newspaper article on politics, history or news. They write a half-page reflection on the article and then share it in class.

When his students come to the library to print out an article, I familiarize them with The New York Times and show them how easy it is to get quality articles from a highly reputable source. It has become the first stop for many students for current events content.

Recently, I witnessed a senior, Thomas Wheeler, show another student how he used The Times to select an article for class. When I asked why he chose the article “American-Born Woman Who Joined ISIS Is Not a Citizen, Judge Rules,” he said, “I wanted something different than the usual politics and it was interesting.”

A U.S. History Research Paper

The juniors in Brian Crowley and Daniel Ritchie’s United States history classes are no strangers to The Times, either. It’s one of their main resources for their end-of-year research papers in which they write about a topic that they covered during the course of the year — anything from the Civil War to the Vietnam War (plus some exceptions for topics of significance from more recent history, like Sept. 11.)

Students have explored such topics as immigration, the United States’ emergence as a world power, the morality of dropping the atomic bomb, and the role of journalism in the Spanish-American War.

A key component of this project is finding relevant, reliable and current sources to support their research. When asked why he recommends The Times for this, Mr. Crowley said, “We always impress upon the students the value of reputable sources and The New York Times is at the top of the list.”

English: Making Text Connections and Improving Writing With Learning Network Contests

Student Contests and Mentor Texts

Jenn Billings has embraced teaching with The Times by encouraging her students to enter the many contests on The Learning Network. Virtually every one of her students has entered one, and three have been selected as finalists: Grace MacLean was awarded an honorable mention in the 2018 Student Review Contest for her piece “Riverdale: Exquisite Garbage”; Annie Sheridan was a runner-up in the 2019 Connections Contest for her piece comparing “Frankenstein” to an article about mental health care; and, this year, Lucas Koughan’s photo was a runner-up in the “Show Us Your Generation” Photo Contest.

Now, the word is out and students are eager to enter, win and get their work published. (Plus, they know if their piece is selected, Ms. Billings will immediately replace their prior grade with a perfect score.)

“I think it is a good opportunity to connect to the outside world, outside of Marblehead,” Freya Corelle, a junior, said about entering the contests. “It feels rewarding to enter a contest. Knowing millions of people read The Times every day, I want to make sure my writing is authentic in terms of my opinions and my morals.”

And when I asked Grace MacLean, who received an honorable mention for her review of the TV show “Riverdale,” why she wrote her piece, she said, “I liked doing it because it wasn’t something I did for a grade. It was for fun so it came more naturally.”

Ms. Billings’s students aren’t the only ones who have been inspired. Earlier this year, editorials written by her former students for The Learning Network’s Student Editorial Contest were featured in our local paper in a multipart editorial series called “Marblehead High School Students Speak Their Minds.”

“The beauty of the assignment is that the students got to focus on what they were interested in learning more about,” Ms. Billings is quoted saying in the piece.

This year, Ms. Billings is using The Learning Network’s new Mentor Text series to teach writing in preparation for these contests. On a recent visit to her 11th-grade class, she was using two of those texts, “The Iguana in the Bathtub” by Anne Doten and “How Ramen Got Me Through Adolescence” by Veronique Greenwood, to introduce personal narratives to the class. Her students looked through each text to find words and phrases that the authors used well to evoke feelings and develop their characters. This whole class activity was helpful since students were working on writing personal narratives of their own to submit to The Learning Network’s Personal Narrative Essay Contest.

Connecting Novels to the News

Alisha Dolan uses The Times with her 11th-grade classes during their study of “The Crucible.” As they read, Ms. Dolan invites students to relate the novel to current events by having them find articles in The New York Times that explore similar figures, themes and events.

Students have connected the hysteria during the Salem witch trials to President Trump’s reaction to the Mueller report. They’ve also compared how immigrants were treated during the Red Scare to how they are treated in the United States today. They’ve even related the way Senator Joseph McCarthy discredited the media in the 1950s to the way Mr. Trump has tried to do so.

For fun, she’s had her classes enter The Learning Network’s annual Connections Contest, which invites students to link something they’re studying in school with the world today. When I asked why she likes using this contest, Ms. Dolan said it “is exactly what we do as part of English. Making relevant connections to ‘The Crucible’ and the world around us makes something written in the 1950s, now 2019.”

Thomas Higgins uses The Times to help students build background knowledge before they read “Of Mice and Men.” In a “mini-research project” they learn what life was like for different groups of people during the 1930s by researching topics like the plight of migrant workers, the treatment of the developmentally disabled, the Great Depression and the American dream.

Then, because Mr. Higgins wants to show his students how these topics relate to modern society, they read articles from The Times that touch on the issues migrant farm workers and those with developmental disabilities face today. Being able to make these modern connections has been invaluable to his students.

In her classes’ study of the novel, Ashley Skeffington makes a different use of The Times: She has her students read the 2010 Opinion piece “Friendship in an Age of Economics.” Then, students discuss how it relates to George and Lennie’s relationship.

The Freshman Research Paper

The research paper is a key part of the freshman English curriculum. A few years ago, the teacher Anna Buono developed a research project around Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.” Once again, The Times is a very important resource for students seeking well-vetted background on the book and information on the evolution of the “monster.”

For example, in the library guide I created for students to use along with this project, I include two Times articles: “Frankenstein at 200,” a 2018 piece by Jennifer Schuessler that provides a comprehensive overview of the seemingly endless stream of adaptations of Shelley’s story, and “The Microbots Are on Their Way,” a 2019 article from the Science section related to bioethics and medicine. It begins:

Like Frankenstein, Marc Miskin’s robots initially lie motionless. Then their limbs jerk to life.

But these robots are the size of a speck of dust. Thousands fit side-by-side on a single silicon wafer similar to those used for computer chips, and, like Frankenstein coming to life, they pull themselves free and start crawling.

Service Learning: Building Action Plans Based on Times Texts

In addition to her English classes, Ms. Billings co-teaches a newly created service learning course with a social studies teacher, Lindsay Bachman. They’ve built their curriculum around several New York Times texts.

One of the focal issues they explore is poverty. Their students read texts like Matthew Desmond’s book “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City” and Stephanie Land’s 2019 New York Times Op-Ed “The Housecleaning Job That Saved My Life.” Students explore the texts in groups to glean a better understanding of the causes and effects of poverty and determine ways to alleviate it.

When I visited their class, students were reading New York Times articles to come up with potential action steps they could take to address poverty on a local level. Ms. Bachman had asked the class to come up with three solutions and an unintended consequence those might have. Each student then had to find two sources that supported their solution and one that went against it.

One student, Katherine Simcoe, chose to use the article “Tuition-Free College Could Cost Less Than You Think” by David Deming to support her position. She told me, “By getting a reduced-cost education, college students, especially those from low-income families, can help reduce their debt and decrease those living in the poverty cycle.”

At the end of the unit, Ms. Bachman and Ms. Billings had their students write a letter to a local official advocating for the implementation of an action step they had identified. A few of them even received responses.

English Language Learning: Using Images to Spark Writing and Discussion

Pictures can be great writing starters for English language learners, according to the English language education teacher Catherine Whyte. Inviting students to write about or discuss an image from The Learning Network’s Picture Prompts feature is a common way for Ms. Whyte to begin her classes. She says it’s been a great practice to get students sharing their perspectives, looking at details, and articulating what they want to convey.

She’s also used these images as starting points for narrative essays. This year, she had students respond to images from The Learning Network’s “550 Prompts for Narrative and Personal Writing” to build a collection of stories that they can further develop into personal narratives. The image above, from “Are You a Sneaker Head?,” was one such picture.

The writing prompts also make a great jumping off point for mini-lessons on text organization, nonfiction text features and analytical thinking strategies. Students and teacher read the pieces together to talk about structure and features of reported information and important facts. Ms. Whyte feels The New York Times is a way for her to bring in current events, personal stories, experiences and background knowledge when teaching students how to write personal narratives.

While Carla Cefalo teaches the standard health curriculum — touching on topics like healthy relationships, opioid use, vaping, depression, eating disorders and public health — social and emotional wellness has also become a key component of her class.

Recently, she used the Learning Network writing prompt “Why Do Bystanders Sometimes Fail to Help When They See Someone in Danger?” in relation to talking about relationships, CPR, bullying and vandalism. Students first read an excerpt from an article about a teenager who was killed in a fight while others stood by and recorded his suffering on their phones. Then, they chose three of the prompt’s questions to which to respond.

This elicited an engaging and varied class discussion: One student shared a situation in which she had witnessed domestic abuse; another talked about how video gaming has desensitized students toward violence.

Articles like this one get students talking about real-world examples of social and emotional issues and act as wonderful supplemental materials to Ms. Cefalo’s curriculum. In fact, she plans to turn several other writing prompts from The Learning Network into core talking points for her class, including:

Administration: Spreading Awareness About Issues That Affect Teenagers

Long before Gov. Charlie Baker signed legislation to restrict vaping products in the state of Massachusetts, Marblehead High School’s wellness department, health department, counselors and administration sought out ways to inform students and the high school community of the dangers and signs of vaping.

When I saw the article “The Mysterious Vaping Illness That’s ‘Becoming an Epidemic’” this summer in The Times, I knew it would be a valuable resource for our community. I sent it to Ms. Cefalo, a wellness teacher who addresses this issue in her curriculum, and Gina Hart, a counselor who provides resources to the school community.

Then, at the beginning of the school year, our principal, Dan Bauer, included this article in an email on vaping that he sent out to the Marblehead community. With e-cigarette use escalating and the Food and Drug Administration moving to further regulate them, he wanted to share some educational information with students, parents and staff.

Knowing my principal shared this resource from The New York Times with the Marblehead High School community showed me how valued The Times is not only by teachers and students, but by the administration as well.

As a school library media specialist, it is my job to find well-vetted sources to show students that there are alternatives to just searching Google for an answer. While they may get many hits from a Google search, they will not find the wealth of reputable information on their topic that they could discover with one search on nytimes.com.

I want to personally thank The New York Times for its commitment to education and for partnering our school with its generous sponsorship program.