TELLING HISTORY PROJECT
Understanding the Past to Create the Future Classroom Programs!
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Generation human rights classroom programs guide students to understand the effects of profound world events- those that challenge through violence and injustice as well as those that inspire commonality and the pursuit of truth via academic, experiential, and art-based curriculum.
Our classroom workshops incorporate visual and cultural experiences that expand students concept of community and enable them to connect to the greater ‘global village’. We provide academic, experiential and art-based workshops that enable students to investigate world events, problem solve and become actively engaged in the global community. Each unit includes a photography exhibit and a classroom video.
Providing the essential grounding for all other classroom workshops, Foundations examines themes of civil society, human rights declarations; its defenders and offenders. Students become familiarized with declarations, immerse themselves in biographies of human rights defenders, learn about the man who instigated the international recognition of genocide, and more. Each lesson is complemented by photography and multimedia.
This unit is comprised of six classroom workshops.
"History is written by the victors." ~ Winston Churchill
This unit guides students in an exploration the subjective nature of history; which voices are amplified; and which are silenced. Through a variety of historical narratives—story-based, oral, written and visual accounts—students will learn to identify the biases inherent in our cultural narratives.
This unit is comprised of 8 student workshops and includes oral history classroom projects!
Through specific themes students will investigate recent and ongoing genocides in Darfur, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Cambodia. Exercises include researching and designing a Rwanda Gacaca court in the classroom, creating a refugee camp, evaluating resiliency as depicted through art in Bosnia, reviewing transcripts of perpetrators meeting victims in Cambodia, and more
This unit is comprised of 14 student workshops.
This unit delves into the aftermath of war and genocide. Through investigating specific wars students will research and review truth commissions and various healing processes that post traumatic societies choose to help process and move past the atrocities of war.
This unit is comprised of 10 classroom workshops
This unit takes a close look at human rights violations around the world, placing them within contexts to which students can better relate. Examples of study include sex trafficking, the mining of minerals in the Congo, child soldiers, and forced labor. Students begin to question, “Where do the minerals in my cell phone come from?” "Where does the sugar/cocoa in my chocolate bar originate?”time and how historians juxtapose these three elements.
This unit is comprised of 16 student workshops
Water is essential to life. Without water we cannot survive and without clean water we cannot be healthy. While we often take it for granted, this unit gives students an understanding of water’s vital importance and critical scarcity in many areas of the world.
This unit is comprised of 6 workshops.
Youth Action: Creating a Just World
In this unit students transform their new knowledge of human rights into action plans to promote a world free from human rights abuse. They learn the tools to design and implement projects on a local or international level using technology, art, writing, and their own voices.
This unit is comprised of 10 workshops
“It’s great to see young people get involved in important issues, raising awareness and spreading a message of peace that inspires others. I commend you for the terrific work being done by Generation Human Rights.”
“The Telling History Project opens our eyes to what is going on in other places. If we did not have this project we would never be able to see. We are uneducated about the world and it is a shame.”
1. CURRICULUM: Generation Human Rights’ Telling History Project Box is an original, year-long, multimedia human rights curriculum for high school classrooms. The THP Box includes 7 classroom units with 10-12 lesson plans per unit, a classroom photography exhibit created by renowned human rights photographers for each unit, as well as a classroom video on the unit topic. Topics covered include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, recent and current genocides, child soldiers, and human rights defenders. The curriculum educates youth to become global citizens and understand the roles they can play as peacemakers and young ambassadors of human rights for all. Among the endorsements we have received for this curriculum is strong support from Dr. Andrea Whittaker, Director of the Stanford University School of Education:
“The THP curriculum serves both as a window to the world and as a looking glass in which youth can reflect on themselves and on their values. This allows students to tangibly grasp historical and current events with empathy, as they increasingly recognize that people in the world are more similar than different.”
2. TEACHER TRAINING: Generation Human Rights will provide Professional Development Workshops about human rights for classroom teachers to help educate them about contemporary and recent human rights issues and train them in creative educational techniques to use with this curriculum. Trainings provided in these workshops include Teaching about Traumatic Events in the Classroom, Maps, Globes & Culture: Integrating Current Events into your Curriculum, and more.
3. CLASSROOM SUPPORT: Generation Human Rights will provide Embedded Professional Development Workshops in schools. In these workshops, Generation Human Rights instructors teach alongside the primary classroom teachers. This provides the class direct support from a human rights expert alongside their regular classroom teacher, and the teacher herself receives training in the curriculum topics and is supported as she introduces them in-class.
Our classroom workshops incorporate visual and cultural experiences that expand students concept of community and enable them to connect to the greater ‘global village’. We provide academic, experiential and art-based workshops that enable students to investigate world events, problem solve and become actively engaged in the global community. Each unit includes a photography exhibit and a classroom video.