Classroom Activities

Using Editorial Cartoons to Teach Social Justice is a series of 14 lessons. Each lesson focuses on a contemporary social justice issue. These lessons are multidisciplinary and geared toward middle and high school students.

This checklist provides suggestions for what kids can do when bullying occurs – written for students being bullied, students who witness bullying and the bullies themselves.

Sometimes students get stuck on superficial notions of identity, both in understanding themselves and in looking at their classmates. This activity uses literature to challenge stereotypes and help children think about their inner selves. It also allows them to explore metaphor, other poetic language and visual artistic expression as they get to know themselves and one another better.

This is one of my favorite tolerance activities this is one of my favorite tolerance activities. it helps students think about leaving others out of groups and tolerating differences within the classroom. You will need many small self-adhesive stars of six different colors (any shape of stickers may be used). 

I am an eighth-grade language arts teacher in durham, New Hampshire. My students have grown up in an environment where there is very little exposure to ethnic, racial or LGBT communities. They are ripe for learning, and are in a unique position to “be” the change. 

Conflict managers can help dissolve playground problems.

Activities meet the following objectives:

• understand how a cartoon uses words and images to make a political statement
• learn about gender discrimination and Title IX

Commemorate the life of Louis Braille.

Some anti-bullying policies actually do more harm than good. Educators can use the following tips to intervene appropriately when bullying occurs.

According to a survey conducted by Teaching Tolerance, the National Education Association and the Civil Rights Project last year, the vast majority of teachers say their schools are free of racial and ethnic tensions. Yet, federal reports show that one in four students are victimized in racial or ethnic incidents in the course of a typical school year.

In this activity, students in the middle and upper grades will explore whether Obama's selection as the next president of the United States marks a new era in America, one where race doesn't matter.

February is a time often reserved for the celebration of past leaders and visionaries who fought peacefully and intellectually to provide us with more opportunities for a more privileged future.

This shortest month of the year is typically filled with history reports, pageants, guest speakers, cultural fairs and the like. Seldom a day goes by that we don't hear the names of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Madame C.J. Walker, George Washington Carver, and so on.

Teaching Tolerance teamed with Bread and Roses, the cultural arm of local 1199, the National Health & Human Service Employees Union of the AFL-CIO to present the International Women of Hope Project.

Activities meet the following objectives:

• understand the importance of context in decoding an editorial cartoon
• understand how a cartoon uses satire to make a political statement

Everyone has a bad day once in a while. This activity helps students be sensitive to schoolmates who might be having a bad day and gives them a way to cross boundaries and bring cheer to others.

Activities will help students explore how editorial cartoons often use familiar adages or idioms in new ways to make a point about something.

Activities will help students see how artists can use cartoons to express their opinions about society and culture.

Understand how evidence regarding behavioral patterns might challenge personal beliefs and assumptions about social behavior

Activities will help students understand how images can come together to make a statement in an editorial cartoon

"One must ask, 'Are you doing everything you can?' and I think if the answer is try 'Yes,' then you fell neither hopeless nor despairing."

"It started with five women, then 15, then 80, then 150. When it reached these numbers, I realized I had to do something for these women."

"We Africans may be impoverished, but we are not poor. ... We can learn things from others, but we also have a lot to offer the world."

"Now I would like to see Guatemala at peace, with indigenous and nonindigenous people living side by side."