Education Newsletters

Great Lessons on Green Schools and Low Impact Living

In this newsletter you’ll find the story of a family with a remarkable resolution. For one year, “No Impact Man” Colin Beavan and his family tried to uplug, produce no trash, and buy nothing. We are excited to share the newly released No Impact Project Curriculum to get your students thinking about the effects of ordinary actions on the environment.

How to Be a Climate Hero: Small Steps to Living Differently‏

With the help of Annie Leonard’s compelling Story of Stuff Project and other inspiring YES! resources, take yourself and and your students to the next level by looking at small steps to living differently.

Teaching What Matters: Preparing Your Students for the Real World

Service-learning projects and climate action resources from Facing the Future. What is a free school? YES! classroom tools for DIY Learning, things educated people really should know, and introducing the YES! Exemplary Essay Project.

Tools for Teaching Beyond the Classroom

Rethinking Schools lesson plan essays on democracy and real-world issues. Molokai students learn and earn community and self respect for tackling local environmental issues. Parker Palmer connects classroom teaching and inner life.

Make Sense of Today's Economy

Great classroom tools to help your students understand the roots of the current crisis and the economic divide. Includes curriculum from United for a Fair Economy.

Reconnecting Schools to Real Food

Where does your food come from? Teaching tools from Sustainable Table, Sea Food Watch, and Chris Jordan.

Food for Everyone

No food allowed in the classroom? Change that with resources designed to help students learn about the connection between food, environment and the economy.

Happy Teachers, Happy Students?

7 Doors to Happiness, lesson plans beyond the inauguration, sweet and fair Valentine's Day.

Sustainable Happiness

Take the happiness quiz , and read stories of about joy in surprising places: among teenagers, in a city-wide pillowfight and even at a Christmas with no presents.

Conversations of Courage

YES! for Teachers and Students features classroom materials to cross the divide. Mix It Up in the lunchroom, talk to someone who is different from you, speak up. Also... discover the beauty of teenagers.

Voting For Change

Project VoteSmart, lesson plans to analyze political cartoons, and Debate Watching 101 from League of Women Voters. Meet musicians who vote with their heart, and two young women whose hearts led them to civic engagement.

Food Crisis? Teach Fair Trade

Can there be food and water for all? Read about third graders who chose to eat local food, find lesson plans on Fair Trade chocolate, bananas, and coffee, and the Global Water Supply curriculum.

Teaching with the News

Brown University's Choices program explores the U.S.'s role in the world, Peace Corps volunteers share their stories, and 13-year-old citizen diplomats visit a sister city in Nicaragua.

Barefoot College

Features the Barefoot College, created by and for India's poor and guided by Gandhi's principles. Watch the moving video, "Be the Change" and read about one teacher's determination to teach climate change in a small town.

Meal Plan: Resources for Teaching and Learning about Food

Middle schoolers learn to grow fresh carrots, and Will Allen brings gardens and social justice to the inner-city. Curricula from the Center for Ecoliteracy, and reports on the Youth Climate Summit in DC.

Teaching about stuff...and everything else

Lessons on redefining progress as more than "more stuff", Facing the Future's global sustainability lessons, and Annie Leonard's famous "The Story of Stuff"- with resources to help students find solutions.

Stories of Peace for Your Classroom

The powerful Voices in Wartime documentary and lesson plans, Change Starts Here curriculum on Desmond Tutu and other Nobel-winners, lessons from Darfur, and a man who makes guitars out of guns.

Stand Up to Corporate Power

Wangari Maathai and the YES! Earth Charter Curriculum, Universal Declaration of Human Rights poster, "China Blue" documentary on sweatshops, Peak Moment interviews, and "Instant Karma" CD for Darfur.

Living Well - for Peace

An edible school yard, the YES! Earth Charter Curriculum in action, and sixth grade girls learning about immigration through friendship. Facing the Future teaches poverty, population, and climate change.

Cuba's Cure

Why does Cuba spend much less than America on healthcare, and yet have far healthier citizens? Learn about Cuba's commitment to free medical training and sending doctors to international disaster zones.