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About this Guide

Introduction

Beginning in spring 2014, a team of New Jersey educators convened to develop the structure and content for this online curriculum integration guide.  Led by retired NJ social studies supervisor and HRE USA Steering Committee member William R. Fernekes, the team agreed that a guide that would be helpful to classroom educators in New Jersey should consist of lessons and supporting materials that were linked to the NJ Core Curriculum Content Standards for Social Studies.  Additionally, the team recognized the importance of designing a guide that (1) would permit easy access to the lessons in both PDF and Word formats and (2) would be infinitely expandable as new lessons were created, tested, and refined by participants.

Each team member agreed to author one lesson that would be reviewed by peers on the project as well as experts in the field of human rights education, after which the lessons would be field-tested with students.  Following the field-testing, final revisions to the lessons would be completed and all learning materials being submitted to support the lessons would be reviewed against standard copyright permission guidelines.  Finally, if student work was submitted to showcase high quality student work products, such work would be received and mounted by the project on the HRE USA website only after permission had been granted by the student and his/her parents or legal guardians, and the student’s name had been removed from the submitted work product.

The lesson development process takes approximately 18 months. During the first phase of the project (2014-2015), eight lessons with related learning resources have been mounted on the project section of the HRE USA website. As of mid-February 2017, five additional lessons have been mounted for a total of thirteen lessons with related materials now available for use.

Each lesson is correlated with one or more of the approved 2014 NJ Core Curriculum Standards in Social Studies and one or more relevant Common Core Curriculum Standards, and all lessons contain suggested modifications for ESL populations and classified students, as well as suggestions regarding how each lesson supports literacy development.

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Overview of Guide

This curriculum integration guide is designed to provide model lessons to assist NJ social studies and other educators in implementing human rights education within their daily practice.  To facilitate that process, the guide provides:

  1. An intellectual framework and philosophical rationale supporting the implementation of human rights education in New Jersey’s public schools
  2. A brief summary of New Jersey’s commitment to human rights education in the state’s Social Studies Curriculum Standards and Holocaust/Genocide Education mandate
  3. A description of the content of human rights education
  4. A table that delineates how the model lessons in this guide relate to specific NJ Social Studies Curriculum Standards (2014 Revised Standards)
  5. Links to the model lessons and related lesson support materials
  6. Links to additional resources that support the implementation of human rights education and professional development for educators
  7. A copyright statement governing the use and potential modification of the model lessons in this guide
  8. A listing of acknowledgements (contributors of lessons, HRE USA staff and others who assisted in project development, and a listing of expert reviewers of project lessons.)

Acknowledgements

The development of this project was the outgrowth of a meeting where New Jersey members of HRE USA determined that a curriculum integration guide tied to the NJ social studies standards would be a very helpful resource for educators.  The core group of lesson authors emerged from that initial meeting, and other participants have joined the project since that time.  The members of the initial project team, including all authors of the lesson mounted on the project website, are listed here.

Project Team Members

Project Coordinator
William R. Fernekes, HRE USA NJ Regional Representative and Part-time Lecturer, Rutgers Graduate School of Education

Founding Team Members

  • Michael Catelli, social studies supervisor and elementary school faculty Sarah Falzarano, Holly Jongema, Elizabeth Rudin in the Somerset Hills Regional School District, Bernardsville NJ
  • Anna Major, former social studies teacher, Bernards Twp. Schools, Basking Ridge NJ
  • Jessica Mintz, social studies teacher, Bayonne Public Schools, Bayonne NJ
  • Kris Myers, social studies teacher, Hunterdon Central Reg. HS, Flemington NJ
  • Daniel Norris, social studies teacher, Bernards Twp. Schools, Basking Ridge NJ
  • Danny Papa, social studies supervisor, Jefferson Twp. Schools, Lake Hopatcong NJ
  • Deborah Rokosny, social studies teacher, Warren Hills Regional HS, Washington NJ
  • Sharon Sweeney, social studies teacher, Hunterdon Central Reg. HS, Flemington NJ
  • John Terry, social studies teacher, Jefferson Twp. Schools, Lake Hopatcong NJ
  • Mariel Waters, former social studies teacher, Jefferson Twp. Schools, Lake Hopatcong NJ

The project team continually adds new members and welcomes educators from NJ and all U. S. states and territories to join the project team.

 Lesson Authors

  • Michael Catelli, social studies supervisor and elementary school faculty Sarah Falzarano, Holly Jongema, Elizabeth Rudin in the Somerset Hills Regional School District, Bernardsville NJ
  • Marco DiMarcello, social studies teacher, Hunterdon Central Reg. HS, Flemington NJ
  • Adena Friedberg, independent social studies educator, formerly a social studies teacher in the Bernards Twp. Schools, Basking Ridge NJ
  • Adam Leonard, social studies teacher, Hunterdon Central Reg. HS, Flemington NJ
  • Anna Major, social studies teacher, Bernards Twp. Schools, Basking Ridge NJ
  • Jessica Mintz, social studies teacher, Bayonne Public Schools, Bayonne NJ
  • Kris Myers, social studies teacher, Hunterdon Central Reg. HS, Flemington NJ
  • Daniel Norris, social studies teacher, Bernards Twp. Schools, Basking Ridge NJ
  • Danny Papa, social studies supervisor, Jefferson Twp. Schools, Lake Hopatcong NJ
  • Sharon Sweeney, social studies teacher, Hunterdon Central Reg. HS, Flemington NJ
  • John Terry, social studies teacher, Jefferson Twp. Schools, Lake Hopatcong NJ

HRE USA Staff and Leadership

  • Emily Farell, HRE USA Webmaster
  • Adam Stone, Chair-HRE USA Collaborative Action, Policy, and Advocacy Committee

Expert Reviewers

  • Gloria Alter, Former Assoc. Professor of Education, Northern Illinois University
  • Dennis Banks, Professor of Secondary Education/ETEC, SUNY Oneonta
  • Sarah Herder, The Advocates for Human Rights
  • David Shiman, Professor Emeritus of Education, University of Vermont
  • Adam Stone, Film maker and human rights advocate

HRE USA NJ also expresses its gratitude to the Rutgers Graduate School of Education for providing meeting space and technology assistance for this project, as well as to the participating school districts for providing support for faculty member attendance at project team meetings and at conferences where the project’s content and materials have been presented.

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Copyright Statement

This curriculum integration guide utilizes a Creative Commons License for the contents of the lessons and related lesson materials.  This license can be accessed at http://creativecommons.org.  The specific license type is identified as:

CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA)

This license lets users remix, tweak, and build upon the lessons provided within this curriculum integration guide website non-commercially, as long as users credit the others and license their new creations (example—modified lessons) under identical terms (meaning the use of the same Creative Commons License and its terms.)

Individuals who use the lessons provided in this curriculum integration guide and modify them in some fashion should provide credit to the original author of the lesson, using the wording shown below.

“This lesson was originally designed and implemented by _____________ and was made available for education use on the HRE USA Curriculum Integration Guide Website in February 2016.  I have modified the lesson and these modifications conform to the terms of this Creative Commons license: CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA).”

 

We are grateful for the generous support of our members, individual donors, and The Puffin Foundation Ltd
The core values of HRE USA and its partner organizations include transparency and critical thinking skills. We believe that human rights--and human rights education--belong to everyone, and that the full realization of human rights means that access to human rights education materials must never be conditioned upon the subscription to any particular religious faith, ideology, political affiliation, or membership in any particular organization and that any organizational connections should be openly acknowledged.