Planet Classroom

Planet Classroom is a global network for youth by youth that brings together musicians, dancers, video game creators, filmmakers, innovators, and emerging technologists to entertain, educate and engage. The creators and curators focus on celebrating global oneness. They do this by showcasing powerful video storytelling, cultural workshops, and social impact innovations combined with interactive discussion on global challenges featuring voices from around the world. 

All programming on the Planet Classroom Network is made available for FREE.

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Dawnland Online Film Screening + Live Q&A

EVENT DETAILS: 
When: Thursday, February 25, 2021
Time: 6 pm – 8:30 pm CST
Where: Online
Cost: FREE

Description: 
This is a special opportunity to see the 86-minute directors’ cut of Dawnland followed by a live Q and A. For decades, child welfare authorities have been removing Native American children from their homes to save them from being Indian. In Maine, the first official “truth and reconciliation commission” in the United States begins a historic investigation. National News & Documentary Emmy® award-winning film Dawnland goes behind-the-scenes as this historic body grapples with difficult truths, redefines reconciliation, and charts a new course for state and tribal relations.

Join chair of the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission David Faunkle, educator and linguist Roger Paul (Passamaquoddy), filmmaker and Upstander Project director Adam Mazo, and Upstander Project learning director Mishy Lesser for a live Q&A moderated by Dodd Human Rights Impact director Glenn Mitoma after the film. The discussion will center on the burgeoning conversations and moves to create truth and healing commissions in the land now known as the United States. 

Renewing A Human Rights Agenda Series

Mark your calendars! UICHR announces its spring webinar series: Renewing a Human Rights Agenda. All sessions are held on Wednesdays from 12:00 – 1:00 pm CST

Upcoming Webinars:

  • February 24, 12:00 PM: Renewing a Human Rights Agenda: U.S. Foreign Policy
  • March 10, 12:00 PM: Renewing a Human Rights Agenda: Defending Democracy in the U.S.
  • March 24, 12:00 PM: Renewing a Human Rights Agenda: The Criminal Legal System
  • April 7, 12:00 PM: Renewing a Human Rights Agenda: The Climate Crisis
  • April 28, 12:00 PM: Renewing a Human Rights Agenda: Native American Rights

A few days after each event, the webinar recording will be posted to the UICHR Youtube channel

NEH Summer Institute – Grassroots History of Civil Rights Movement

Teaching for Change is partnering with a team of scholars, SNCC veterans, and educators from Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies and the SNCC Legacy Project on an NEH Teacher Institute, The Civil Rights Movement: Grassroots Perspectives (1940 – 1980), in the summer of 2021.

Participants (classroom teachers and school librarians in grades 7-12) will learn the bottom-up history of the Civil Rights Movement and receive resources and strategies to bring to their students. The institute will be held online and teachers receive a stipend of $2,850.

Deadline by March 1, 2021

RFK HUMAN RIGHTS FEBRUARY WEBINARS

Join Robert F Kennedy Human Rights for their upcoming virtual events with key experts discussing how to achieve human rights goals through international cooperation and collective action. 

February 18, 2021, at 3 p.m. EST: UN Sustainable Development Goals Series
We’re kicking off our webinar series about the UN Sustainable Development Goals, produced by our very own Youth Advisory Board. Our first guest will be Dr. Glenn Mitoma, assistant professor of human rights and education at the University of Connecticut’s Human Rights Institute and the inaugural Director of Dodd Impact, who’ll guide a discussion about how international human rights objectives are established and how accountability among individual nations is maintained. 

February 25, 2021, at 10 a.m. EST: Nizami Ganjavi Speaker Series
Join us for the second installment of our speaker series in partnership with the Nizami Ganjavi International Center. We’ll feature Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, an environmental scientist who was the first female president of Mauritius, and hear her firsthand account of advocating for human rights, justice, and international diplomacy.

February 25, 2021, at 5 p.m. EST: UN Sustainable Development Goals Series
During this second installment of our UN Sustainable Development Goals webinar series, we’ll hear from activist Cara Kennedy-Cuomo, who has joined RFK Human Rights to work on several key initiatives, including fighting on behalf of farmworkers and protesting the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya in Bangladesh and Myanmar. 

Painting a Just Picture: Art and Activism

EVENT DETAILS: 
When: Wednesday, February 24, 2021
Time: 3:30 – 4:30 pm CT
Where: Live Stream on Zoom
Cost:  FREE

This webinar, from Learning for Justice and co-hosted by experts from the National Gallery of Art, will offer new understandings of American visual art and its role in helping us understand our history. You’ll also learn how art has been integral to activism and fights for justice. The webinar will cover how to integrate the visual arts into content areas such as ELA and social studies, including an overview of strategies for cross-curricular collaboration. Finally, using works from the National Gallery of Art and K-12 students, you will receive an overview of project and lesson ideas and discuss strategies for engaging in arts instruction. This webinar will help educators across all content areas create a more diverse and powerful curriculum.

Black History Month Books for All Ages

From First Book

In 2020, educators and avid readers collectively recognized the urgency of reading anti-racist books and exercising self-education. It was apparent, perhaps more so than other years, why Black stories matter, especially in the classroom. While, in 2021 and beyond, recognizing Black pain and struggle remains an important focus, the curators of the First Book Marketplace for educators also work to strike a balance—highlighting books that celebrate Black joy, excellence, and progress.

Lori Prince, director of merchandising at First Book shared, “We want to make sure that all readers see the full breadth of the Black experience, not just stories of trauma and oppression.”

We may celebrate Black History Month in February, but Black history is now—this minute, this year, this decade. Give readers of any age the tools they need to learn more with First Book’s 28 books for 28 days, a hand-picked selection of fantastic reads, designed especially for educators.

>> Access booklist

IJHRE Issue 5 – HRE and Black Liberation

Situating Black activism and movement building in its historical context, this special issue of the International Journal of Human Rights Education (IJHRE) features articles, essays, commentaries, and book reviews that put the longstanding call for Black lives to matter and the quest for Black liberation in conversation with human rights education as a field of scholarship and practice.

The IJHRE is an independent, double-blind, peer-reviewed, open-access, online journal dedicated to the examination of the theory, philosophy, research, and praxis central to the field of human rights education. This journal seeks to be a central location for critical thought in the field as it continues to expand.

The Cause of All Humanity – The ICC

EVENT DETAILS: 
When: Friday, February 19, 2021
Time: 10 am – 11 am ET
Where: Live Stream on Zoom
Cost:  FREE

Join the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy for a presentation by Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji, President of the International Criminal Court on “the case of all humanity” Why the United States should support the ICC.” His talk will be followed by a panel discussion.

PANELISTS
Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji | President, International Criminal Court
Dr. Geoff Dancy | Associate Professor Department of Political Science, Tulane University
Dr. Phuong Pham | Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Director of Evaluation and Implementation Science, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI)
Dr. Kathryn Sikkink (Moderator) | Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights Policy, Harvard Kennedy School

Teach Amanda Gorman’s 2021 Inauguration Poem, The Hill We Climb”

National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman’s poem “The Hill We Climb,” written for the 2021 inauguration, presents a great opportunity for educators and students to discuss the ways creative expression can help us think about the meaning of democracy. Check out these great lessons below, to get inspired.