IHE News & Announcements January 2010

• Our Top 10 Most Popular Humane Education Activities for 2009
  
• Humane Educator's Toolbox: Lesson Plans for No Impact Man & Food, Inc.
  
• Humane Education in Action: Social Justice in the Middle
  

OUR TOP 10 MOST POPULAR HUMANE EDUCATION ACTIVITIES FOR 2009

Humane education activities and lesson plans are just one of the perks we provide in our Resource Center. We now have more than 75 humane education activities available for free download, and we add new ones often. Here are our 10 most downloaded activities as of the end of 2009:

1. The World's Most Powerful Animal - Who’s the most dangerous AND the most powerful animal? We are! Lead students on an exploration of the positive and negative impacts our choices have on the planet. (grades 2-5)
2. Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Judged - How do our own stereotypes and judgments limit our openness and receptivity to others? This activity uses props (or photos) to explore our snap perceptions of others. (grades 4 & up)
3. Don't Tread on Me - What is oppression? Who gets oppressed? Why don’t we all agree about that? Participants explore their own beliefs about oppression and learn about others'. (grades 6 & up)
4. Analyzing Advertising - Students learn to be ad-savvy by exploring the pervasiveness of ads in their lives and by analyzing what ads are trying to sell…and trying to hide. (grades 5 & up)
5. Whale's Stomach - Students learn about the impact of our "throwaway" society by exploring all the different kinds of trash found in a whale's stomach. (grades 4 & up)
   
6. Two Apples - In this icebreaker, participants learn just how important words and actions are when they explore their impact on two apples. (All ages)
7. A Moment in Their Shoes - How will students feel spending a moment in the shoes of a battery hen or a child slave? Use this lively and thought- provoking activity to introduce human and animal issues and the connections between them. (grades 6 & up)
8. Word Power - Words have enormous power and often assign value. This activity explores sample words in context and what kinds of value those words imply. (grades 4 & up)
9. Lottery Ticket - Use this quick icebreaker to show participants that everyone can make a positive difference! (All ages)
10. Whom Do You Pet & Whom Do You Eat? - What are our relationships with different kinds of animals, and why do those relationships exist? Lead students in an activity which explores why we treat different types of animals differently, and how we can learn to view them with different eyes. (grades 4 & up)
    

HUMANE EDUCATOR'S TOOLBOX: LESSON PLANS FOR NO IMPACT MAN & FOOD, INC.

Two films that have gotten quite a bit of buzz in the last few months are Food, Inc. and No Impact Man. Now activities and lesson plans have been created for both films for teachers to use with their older students.

The No Impact Project has developed a set of 5 lesson plans for use with middle and high school students. Each of the lessons, which can be completed in a single 50-minute class period, focuses on a different environmental issue: consumption, energy, food, transportation and water. Teachers who register for the free downloadable curriculum can also receive access to free film clips and excerpts from the No Impact Man book. The lessons are designed to help students think about the impact of their individual choices, as well as to help them think about the influence of our current systems and to consider the power they have to take positive action for a better world.

The Center for Ecoliteracy has recently created a discussion guide for Food, Inc. for grades 9-12. The free downloadable guide offers questions and activities surrounding the major themes of the film, such as health, sustainability, worker's and citizen's rights, and animal welfare. The guide primarily uses the lens of Socratic discussions (using a series of questions to deepen thinking & exploration) to delve into industrial food production in the U.S. and more positive alternatives. Concepts students explore include:

• Do animals have the right to a certain quality of life?
• Do people have a right to know what's in their food?
• Who is responsible for keeping our food safe?
• Should access to healthy food be a right for everyone?
• What individual or collective actions are you willing to take to improve our food system, and what would be their impact?

HUMANE EDUCATION IN ACTION: SOCIAL JUSTICE IN THE MIDDLE

Stacy Goldberger spends her days connecting middle school students in New Jersey with the intricacies and intrigue of language arts. Because she believes in the importance of raising youth who are informed, engaged citizens, Stacy infuses her curriculum with issues and explorations of social justice. She also organized a Social Justice Day for the entire school and has built the 8th grade language arts curriculum around themes of social justice. Read our interview with Stacy.

Quick Facts:

Current hometown: West Orange, New Jersey
IHE fan since: 2005 when I became vegan and spent a chunk of my summer vacation researching compassionate and veg/vegan organizations.
Current job: 8th grade language arts teacher at Memorial Middle School in Cedar Grove, NJ
Book/movie that changed your life: After reading Howard Lyman's Mad Cowboy in 2002, I gave up eating all animal byproducts.
Guilty pleasure: Facebook and reading on the stationary bike
Inspired by: The many compassionate and enlightened people in my life
Love about yourself: I love that I am not the same person that I was 20 years ago, even though I was a nifty person back then and am quite youthful for my forty years. Being a real adult is cool.
One of your strengths: Being able to laugh over spilt (soy) milk
Interesting fact about you: When I renewed my NJ driver's license this past November, I became an organ donor.
Animal companions: I live quite comfortably with three cats, Scorsese, Zoey, and Rosalie.

 
IHE: What led you to the path of humane education?

SG: When I was working on my graduate degree in education at North Carolina State University, my professors stressed the importance of affective education as well as social justice in the curriculum and in our teaching methods. While teaching middle school students, moreover, I quickly learned how interested adolescents really are in issues of fairness; I also remembered they can be quite cruel to one another.  Consequently, civic duty and empathy should be incorporated into any place where young adolescents learn. My own experiences as an on-and-off-again shelter volunteer and animal advocate have made their way into classroom conversations, especially when I produce sample essays for my students.  In 2005 I was awarded a Geraldine R. Dodge Teaching Fellowship to volunteer at the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah.  My goal was to incorporate kindness to animals as well as the spirit of volunteerism into my classroom.  My week at the sanctuary, however, was a cathartic experience that left me an overall more appreciative, compassionate, and peaceful person and, therefore, a better teacher and human being in the classroom.

 
IHE: You’ve initiated a Social Justice Day at your school. Tell us how that came about, what happened that day, and what your plans are for future SJDs.

SG: Social Justice Day was born out of ongoing discussions between me and former colleague Bernadette Jusinski.  We would frequently talk about bringing speakers to our school to talk to our students about humanitarian and environmental issues. After some grant writing, lots of planning, and way too many phone calls to count, we wound up providing our students and fellow teachers with a half day of specialized speakers and workshops.  Our speakers for the fifth grade classes were from animal welfare and rescue groups; the speakers for the sixth grade workshops all discussed environmental issues; the speakers for the seventh graders workshops spoke about "people" issues, including living with a disability, voting, and advocating for the elderly.  The eighth graders attended a ninety-minute panel with two Holocaust survivors and a moderator.

Pulling off Social Justice Day required me to use my preparation periods, days off from school, and late afternoons for making contacts  and scheduling.  Fortunately, we were able to make and save contacts, so when we have our second Social Justice Day in 2011, we will already have many speakers who are willing and able to return to Memorial Middle School.


IHE: You’ve developed lesson plans and curriculum of your own that infuse humane education into “traditional” lessons (such as your civil rights and Animal Farm lessons). Tell us about that process.

SG: Fortunately, we were able to build the 8th grade language arts curriculum around the theme of Social Justice, hence the subjects of  responsibility to our world and empathy are threaded through many lessons.  The required reading for my students includes Touching Spirit Bear, a story about justice, redemption, forgiveness and learning from animals; Warriors Don't Cry, a memoir about the Little Rock Nine; Farewell to Manzanar, an autobiographical piece on an internment camp for Japanese Americans; Animal Farm; and Night, Elie Wiesel's personal account of surviving Auschwitz. All of these texts automatically lead to discussions, writing assignments, and research on justice.

Although George Orwell's novel is an allegory of the Russian Revolution, he delved into animal rights issues, which led to the uprising on the farm. The hens did not want to give up their eggs to other animals, the horses were tired of being worked to death, and the cows wanted their milk to be used only for their calves. Even though the pigs are the culprits, I do a lesson on the intelligence of pigs, an animal which surpasses dogs and cats in brain power.  When the horse Eight Bells was euthanized on a racetrack two years ago, I brought several related editorials into class and also linked the issue back to Animal Farm.

Before starting the Holocaust unit, my students read the article "38 Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police," which is about the murder of Catherine Genovese; they also read a story about a college student who was shunned by his classmates at UC Berkeley for not interfering when he realized his best friend was raping and murdering a seven -year-old girl.  Now that we're in the middle of the Holocaust unit my students are linking issues like apathy and acts of resistance in those stories to what happened in Nazi-occupied Europe.

During the last two months of school, eighth graders work on their Social Justice research project and presentations. They choose from a list of topics that include the Salem Witch Trials, Miranda Rights, military conscription, animal testing, the Irish Republican Army, and the threat of corporations such as Wal-Mart.

IHE: What have been your successes? Challenges? How have students been reacting to these issues?

SG: Currently, I am teaching a Holocaust and Genocide unit, which offers plenty of challenges.  Very often my students ask me a general 'Why?' abut genocide, and I have to admit that no matter how much history I learn, I will never have a valid reason as to why crimes against humanity occur.  My students want a clear explanation and often try to develop them on their own, and I tell them some things will never be understood. We have to focus on prevention.

Additionally, Holocaust/Genocide studies can be emotionally trying on kids and adults.  Learning about death, hate, and apathy is unsettling but necessary.  My supervisor, who once attended a Holocaust slide show I gave at another school, told me that I teach the subject very gently.  I cannot explain how I or anybody else achieves this, but I was relieved to learn this about myself.  Additionally, I prefer to focus on resistance and justice rather than on death, evil, and shock value. Since students often see history as only what has happened in the past and not what has shaped us and what repeats itself, I have had success with linking more current issues to the Holocaust as well as the internment camps.


IHE: What advice would you give to other teachers who want to include humane education issues in their own teaching?

SG: Review your state's curriculum standards to connect humane education into your own classroom lessons; chances are that your state has character education standards and that your social studies curriculum emphasizes civic-mindedness and duty.  Additionally, many historical events (as well as current events) reviewed in social studies and books read in English language arts are springboards for humane topics. 

Also remember that you are teaching other people's children, and that helping them become more empathetic and compassionate needs to be done without a particular political or ethical agenda. When teaching children to be kind to other humans, animals, and the planet, you need to consider what they learn at home. Never tell or imply to children that what they learn at home is wrong.  Use what they know as a starting point.

 
IHE: Any future plans, dreams or projects?

SG: At times I toy between several goals, including studying genocide and writing a young adult novel on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. One of these years I will be returning to Best Friends for more scooping, cleaning, walking, and purging my soul of any lingering stress and negativity.

back2top

email

print

del.icio.us