TeachableMoment Lessons

SEL & RP

SEL & RP

Activities to support students' social and emotional learning and restorative practices

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Current Issues

Current Issues

Classroom activities to engage students in learning about and discussing issues in the news

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Tips & Ideas

Tips & Ideas

Guidance and inspiration to help build skills and community in your classroom and school

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SEL & RP
Social & Emotional Learning & Restorative Practices
Current Issues
Current Issues
Tips and Ideas
Tips & Ideas

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Working in small groups, students categorize coping strategies as positive, negative, neutral, and time-out behaviors.

Students interview and learn about one another.

A document-based question exercise has students examine differing views on what motivates terrorism by Islamic fundamentalists.

Readings and activities on wartime threats to civil liberties, the history of such threats, and the Constitutional basis for civil liberties.

In a talk at the recent Educators to Stop the War Conference, ESR Metro executive director Tom Roderick reflects on the creativity of teachers during these trying times.

A critique of the PBS miniseries on nuclear weapons.

Readings and activities to help high school students better understand the growing gap between rich and poor and consider the issue in light of this year's presidential election.

Three student readings examine the growing instability of Afghanistan.

A classic guide for how to explore sensitive issues in your classroom.

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In this lesson, students learn about the controversy over new federal guidelines aimed at ensuring that "transgender students enjoy a supportive and nondiscriminatory school

A major strike by workers at Verizon offers a teachable moment: Why do people join unions? Why do they strike? And why are they now striking Verizon?  

Consider giving students a few moments of silence and calm by asking them to focus on an object. If students respond positively to the experience, repeat it. 

The demand for reparations surfaced during the 2016 presidential election, creating a teachable moment on this long-debated issue. In this activity, students learn some background

Presidential candidate Ted Cruz's plans to speak at a Bronx high school were scrapped after students there wrote a letter to their principal describing how Cruz's views were

We use plastics all the time. So often, in fact, that they’re practically invisible to us. In this lesson, students keep a log of their plastic use, take action to decrease it, and