1969. Lena Rosen is an intel­li­gent, obser­vant teenag­er torn between spon­tane­ity and self-con­scious­ness. Dur­ing her junior year, she becomes attuned to the pulse of her times in her first-peri­od Cur­rent His­to­ry class, where rebel­lion, social change, and musi­cal inno­va­tion of the 1960s dom­i­nate dis­cus­sion. When Lena becomes the asso­ciate edi­tor of the school news­pa­per The Bea­con, she is drawn into the swirling dis­course sur­round­ing the Viet­nam War, civ­il rights, envi­ron­men­tal deba­cles, and cam­pus protests — while also nav­i­gat­ing her com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship with Jack Stone, the paper’s edi­tor. As the year pro­gress­es and the anti­war move­ment gains momen­tum, the unrest builds at Waver­ley High. Lena wres­tles with her own cul­tur­al and reli­gious iden­ti­ty as a Jew­ish teen while she and her fel­low stu­dents strug­gle to cope with racial dis­cord, a bomb threat, and the emo­tion­al toll of a world that seems to be unrav­el­ing. When the Kent State shoot­ings col­lapse the dis­tance between head­lines and Lena’s own life, she must decide what it means to stand for peace — and to hope for a bet­ter world. Set dur­ing one school year against the back­drop of an Amer­i­ca on the brink of change, World News from Waver­ley High reveals the cross­roads of per­son­al growth and nation­al unrest.