Teacher, administrator, and editor Eleanor Murdoch Johnson founded a children’s newspaper to bring nonfiction reading materials to elementary school children. Photo Credit: New York Times

There have been many exceptional educators who have made an indelible mark on the American education system. One of them was Eleanor Murdoch Johnson, an elementary school teacher from Oklahoma who founded the children’s newspaper entitled My Weekly Reader.

Eleanor was born in Hagerstown, Washington County, Maryland, on Dec. 10, 1892. As a young woman, she studied at both Colorado College in 2012 and the Central State Teachers College in 1913. She earned her Bachelor’s degree, cum laude, from the University of Chicago in 1925 and her Master’s degree from Columbia University in 1932.

Once she completed her formal education, Eleanor inaugurated her career as a first grade teacher in Oklahoma. She also served as Superintendent of Schools in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

It was while working in Pennsylvania in 1927 that Eleanor came up with the idea of a nonfiction newspaper for elementary school students. “In her work with kids,” says The Weekly Reader editor Terry Borton, “she noticed most of the reading they did was fairy tales and fantasy, which she felt was fine, but she felt they were missing a knowledge and understanding of the real world, which she thought they would like.”

In response, Eleanor proposed a nonfiction weekly newsletter for children that would explain in clear, straightforward prose the newsworthy events of the day. This was when The Weekly Reader was born. The newsletter described such events as the Depression, World War II, assassinations, presidential elections, the Vietnam War, Civil Rights struggles, and the Iran hostage crisis.

Eleanor produced the first issue of the newspaper on Sept. 21, 1928, and remained involved in planning its contents until her retirement from the position in 1978, when she was 85 years old. It has been estimated that The Weekly Reader was read by two-thirds of today’s American adults when they were in elementary school.

Sadly, Eleanor Murdoch Johnson succumbed to cancer on Oct. 8,1987, in Gaithersburg, Maryland. She was 94 years old.