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Folklore invites students to explore the curriculum of "real life."

Thanks to online spaces, bullying has never been easier. Here’s how you can intervene.

Justice: The Original world wide web

I decided to show a short You Tube video clip in class the other day. It’s a montage of scenes of men crying from various movies complete with cheesy background music, a song Don’t Cry Out Loud. I used it to open a discussion about how stereotypes put unnecessary limitations on people.

A few years ago, a picture from The Roanoke Times became the fodder for emails and blog posts. It spread across the Internet in a matter of days, eventually ending up on late-night network talk shows. It began as part of a simple and obscure local news story about road construction. In the article, a pregnant woman in her 30s wondered what effect the high decibel sounds of jackhammers and earth-moving equipment would have on her unborn child. What made this conjecture so worthy of scorn and mockery?

The day after Valentine’s Day 2008, I watched my 1st period students file into the room. They were uncharacteristically quiet. When the bell rang, they all looked at me, waiting to hear how I might make sense of the previous night’s tragedy when Steven Philip Kazmierczak opened fire in Cole Hall on Northern Illinois University’s campus, shooting 21 people and killing five.

This teacher asked herself, “What do I need to know to better support this student?” The answer led to more questions.

This toolkit provides a lesson plan that expands students’ knowledge and understanding of the religious diversity (or lack thereof) in their city, county or state. The lesson ends with an activity around the role of interfaith coalitions in increasing religious understanding.