For Educators

In this lesson, students will watch first-person accounts of what it was like to live in Moscow when Mikhail Gorbachev led the Soviet Union, and then consider what role the Internet might have played during this time and create social media samples with historically accurate details of the foiled August 1991 coup.

In this lesson, students will learn about a Colombian man who took action to provide residents in isolated communities in his country with access to reading materials. Students will then examine literacy rates for their own communities and develop strategies for volunteering to support local literacy efforts. Ideally, students will also complete the volunteer work as a service learning opportunity and a way to develop civic responsibility.

In this lesson, students will hear the points of view of people from various ranks of the Khmer Rouge who participated in the killing of nearly 2 million Cambodians during Pol Pot's regime, which lasted from 1975 to 1979. Students will then speculate in writing about how hearing the truth from the perpetrators might help Cambodians heal from the tragic events of that time period.

In this lesson, students will study the land reform program in Zimbabwe and explain their ideas about whether white people today should be required to make amends for historical race-based injustices for which they were not personally responsible. Students will then apply their thinking to the United States and today’s racial inequities that have resulted from discriminatory policies and practices for housing and property ownership.

In this lesson, students will look closely at the unrehearsed stories that people tell each other every day ("natural narratives") and discover their underlying organization. Using the model for natural narratives created by linguist William Labov, students will break down a story told on film by a Finnish man, as well as natural narratives of their own, in order to identify the structure common to well-developed narratives.

In this lesson, students will compare and contrast two news stories about an incident in which an improvised explosive device (IED) killed Danish soldiers in Afghanistan. They will then use a video clip from a documentary as an information source for writing news stories about a similar event.

In this lesson, students will watch a series of video clips that put a human face on both the process of economic decision-making and the reality for millions of people working abroad in order to transfer some of their income (remittances) to loved ones back in their home countries.

In this lesson, students will investigate traumatic brain injury (TBI), which has become the signature injury of military service in Iraq and Afghanistan. Students will watch video clips that illustrate issues related to TBI, research additional information and create fact sheets to educate soldiers and their families about TBI and direct them to organizations that can provide support.

In this lesson, students will observe the creative process of photographer Murray Fredericks as he captures images of the desolate landscape of Lake Eyre in Australia. They will evaluate Frederick's final images of Lake Eyre and then compare and contrast them to other landscape photographs.

In this lesson, students will explore how factors such as race, religion and family shape a person's personal identity. They will then create self-portraits made up of objects, symbols and/or imagery that represent various parts of their identities.