Current Issues
Classroom activities to engage students in learning about and discussing issues in the news
In this circle activity, students share their thoughts and feelings about events in Ferguson and reflect on a quote about protest from Martin Luther King Jr.
In this brief activity, students share their thoughts and feelings about the grand jury's decision not to indict the police officer who killed unarmed black teen Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
The world's richest 85 people have as much wealth as half the people on earth. Students develop graphics or concepts to demonstrate this extreme inequality, express their thoughts and feelings about it, consider four ways people are working to address the problem, and discuss how they might take...
In this lesson, students learn about a performance art piece by Columbia University student Emma Sulkowicz that dramatizes her reactions to the handling of her campus sexual assault case. Then students consider the wider issue of sexual assault, particularly on college campuses.
Twenty-five years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, students learn about the wall's rise and fall, and consider the legacy of the Cold War. (See also our companion lesson on the 25th anniversary of Solidarity's victory in Poland.)
In small and large group reading and discussion, students consider the U.S. response to Ebola and the need to develop a sense of our interconnectness and responsibility to each other in the face of such global challenges. Extension activities include a video, slideshow, and additional readings.
This lesson provides factual information to students about Ebola. Providing accurate information about the disease may help prevent misinformed students from targeting classmates who are from Africa (or thought to be from Africa), which has happened in some schools. If students have been targeted...
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa and irrational reactions to it in the U.S. are creating challenges in some schools. Here are some suggestions and resources to help school staff restore calm and safety when students are being targeted because of Ebola.
Students read and discuss a brief history of the Polish Solidarity movement, and consider how an unarmed group was able to overcome a powerful and heavily militarized government. (See also our companion lesson marking the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the legacy of the Cold War...
Students learn about why so many languages around the world are facing extinction, and how indigenous movements are fighting to preserve their languages. They consider several distinctive words for which there is no English translation, and, in small groups, make up a word of their own to describe...