Category: Education

The editors of Human Rights Education Review are delighted to announce the publication of the journal’s inaugural issue. HRER is an open-access scholarly journal published by the University of South-Eastern Norway. It provides a forum for research and critical scholarship on human rights as they are practiced, taught, learned and developed in education, law, politics, and in human rights organizations. The journal is dedicated to an examination of human rights in theory, philosophy, policy, and praxis. HRER aims to be global in its reach and this is reflected in the composition of our International Editorial Board.

The first issue includes challenging articles by Walter C. Parker on HRE’s curriculum problem, and by Marta Bivand Erdal  & Mette Strømsø on child rights and national belonging; plus Alicia Muñoz Ramírez’s analysis of the recent struggle to remove HRE from the Spanish school curriculum; and a discussion by Sonja Grover on how legal cases brought by children might enhance human rights advocacy among youth. You will also find reviews of several recent books. This issue will be of particular interest to policy-makers, teacher educators, and NGOs concerned with rights and social justice in schooling.

To receive notification of upcoming articles, visit the journal’s online platform and click on the ‘register’ button in the top right-hand corner.

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Two new lessons have been added to the HRE USA Curriculum Integration Guide.  Jamie Warner, a middle school social studies teacher at Orange Avenue School in Cranford NJ, created the multi-lesson project Going Global—Investigating Issues of Interest and Importance and Semira Markos, a high school social studies teacher at Hunterdon Central Regional HS in Flemington NJ, created the lesson Human Rights in National Memory  Both teachers piloted their lessons after receiving expert feedback from HRE USA educators and her students. The lessons are available in Word and PDF formats for use by educators worldwide.

The Curriculum Integration Guide project was recently contacted by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, who requested permission to place 9 lessons of the 15 currently on the HRE USA website on their agency website for use by educators around the world.  This UN agency website will go live in mid-June 2018, and authors of the lessons have expressed their gratitude at having their lessons recognized by an office of the United Nations.

Phase four of the Curriculum Integration Guide project will commence this summer.  Interested educators who wish to develop lessons focusing on human rights education and who are able to have their lessons piloted with students during the 2018-19 school year, should contract Bill Fernekes for further information about details and timelines.

New from Rethinking Schools is Teaching for Black Lives, a classroom resource grown directly out of the movement for Black lives. Edited by Dyan Watson, Jesse Hagopian, and Wayne Au, this book provides articles and lessons that demonstrate how teachers can connect curriculum to young people’s lives. Teaching for Black Lives highlights the hope and beauty of student activism and collective action.

Opel Tometi, co-founder of #BlackLivesMatter and executive director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration states, “this book is not just for teachers in the classroom, but also for those of us who care about making Black lives matter in the community.  It should be required reading for all who care about the future of black youth.”

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A special issue entitled “Dilemmas and Hopes for Human Rights Education” has been published by Prospects: Comparative Review of Comparative Education – UNESCO’s journal of educational policies and practices. The issue presents examples from the Global South and Global North, reviewing recent theories, challenges and solutions for enabling a transformative approach to HRE through and against the lens of state power. Drawing on examples from Chile, China, Greece, Pakistan, India, the Netherlands, South Africa, Switzerland, and the US. The articles explore the gap between the emancipatory roots of HRE and the lived educational policies and practices of states and schools.

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With over 140 short documentaries and VR experiences there are so many imaginative ways that educators are using SIMA Classroom with their students.

To help you choose the right films for your class, SIMA has created curated film Playlists on some of the most important global education themes. Each one brings together a curated list of award-winning films and our project-based lesson plans to help you reimagine education. Dive into their latest film selections on the Sustainable Development Goals; Gender Equality; VR for Change; and more.

>> Access Playlist

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, and Teaching Tolerance has assembled the following articles and video to help educators celebrate the heritage of this diverse group of Americans with their students—this month and throughout the year.

• I AM ASIAN AMERICAN
  Uncover the true diversity beneath the Asian American label.
• TEACHERS, CHECK YOUR TEXTS
  LGBTQ Asian identities need to be amplified in the school curriculum—and not just during a heritage month.
• HAWAIIANS LIVE IN ALOHA
  This video excerpt is from A Place in the Middle: The True Meaning of Aloha, a 2014 short documentary film. The film can be viewed in its entirety here.

Generation Human Rights has had the incredible opportunity to work with RFKennedy Human Rights and CARE to create two curricula for middle school and high school classrooms on the current world refugee crisis

Last year, as the worldwide refugee crisis continued to escalate, RFKennedy Human Rights, Generation Human Rights and photographer and documentarian Ron Haviv came together to create a comprehensive high school multimedia curriculum on the global refugee crisis. The curriculum fills an urgent real time need as educators and youth locally and abroad struggle to fully understand how the crisis originated, how it impacts communities and how students globally can step into the role as human rights defenders in response to the situation.

For middle schoolers, Generation Human Rights and CARE created another interactive multimedia curriculum about the refugee crisis called Letters Of Hope Classroom. The lesson plans enable students to develop a tangible understanding of the crisis and supports them to make connections with young refugees around the world. The program encourages the development of empathy and inquiry as students create a foundation on which to better understand human rights and the global refugee crisis that finds more 65 million people forcibly displaced from their homes and countries.

>> Download High School Curriculum
>> Download Middle School Curriculum