Curriculum & Resources

Curricula and lesson plans on topics ranging from climate change to happiness.

In each of the following categories, you'll find a variety of teaching tools for immediate use in the classroom or for building your own curriculum. These resources include: lessons, curriculum, poetry, videos, projects, stories, and essays.

Photo by nezumichuu

:: Teaching Happiness

Discover the good life through resilience, creativity, and community.

:: Teaching Outside the Box

Meaningful learning pushes boundaries with action, inquiry, and innovation.

:: Teaching Peace & Justice

Paths to peace, inclusion, equality, and compassion for all.

:: Teaching Sustainability

How to build a robust economy, healthy planet, and just world for all.

:: Visual Learning

Use the wonder of a photo to engage in deep discussions and understanding.

Visual Learning: Week of Nonviolence posted Jan 27, 2009: Use this photo to ask your students what they notice and are wondering. Then share the facts behind the image to connect to greater understanding and discovery.
Connect and Engage: Making History posted Jan 16, 2009: To teach happiness, be happy. Teachers, in particular, need support to be passionate and content in a challenging profession. The Center for Courage and Renewal's "Courage to Teach" supports this belief with essays, articles, and a retreat program.
YES! Recommends: Project Happiness :: 7 Doors Project posted Jan 16, 2009: Take your students on a journey of self-discovery that will ultimately lead them to understanding not only what is happiness for themselves, but also what is happiness for others. Each door represents a facet of your path to happiness, and hosts a multimedia array of interviews, photos, films, questionnaires, and activities.
Curriculum and Resources: Rescue the Planet by Stephanie McMillan posted Dec 29, 2008: A comic strip by Stephanie McMillan with additional curriculum materials on analyzing comics and cartoons.
Visual Learning: NYC Pillow Fight posted Dec 29, 2008: Images, photos, and pictures stimulate the mind. With this YES! lesson plan, you and your students can luxuriate—and pause—to truly understand an image, its message, and why it’s interesting (or not).
Connect and Engage: Happiness posted Dec 17, 2008: These two top-notch resources offer opportunities for you and your students to truly understand the benefits of giving, and the strengths and virtues that make people and communities thrive.
Happiness in the Classroom and Beyond posted Dec 17, 2008: Classroom resources from the Sustainable Happiness issue of YES! Magazine.
Connect and Engage: Addressing Fear posted Oct 27, 2008: Here are lesson plans and how-to resources forcoming to terms with false assumptions about immigrants, the current economic crisis, and walls that separate important relationships. Simply put, it’s about addressing fear with clarity and calmness.
Speak Up! posted Oct 26, 2008: Six Steps to Speaking Up Against Everyday Bigotry Teaching Tolerance's Speak Up! initiative helps individuals stand up to everyday prejudice. Learn not only about injustice, but how to stand up to it.
Connect and Engage: Elections posted Sep 09, 2008: Use this election season to hone your students' skills in media literacy, deciphering political cartoons, and evaluating candidate voting records.
Debate Watching 101 by League of Women Voters posted Sep 09, 2008: The League of Women Voters’ Debate Watching Tools include Debate Watching 101, How to Judge a Candidate, and a candidate scorecard. Watching a debate is more exciting as a group. So, gather your students and be part of history!
5 Ways to Make History by Fran Korten posted Jul 02, 2008: Elections aren’t until November. But the heart of the process is going on right now. Here are my top 5 ideas for making a difference—and staying sane—in the coming months.
Connect and Engage: Food and Water posted Jun 30, 2008: Give your students more hands-on activities with these captivating lesson plans about life’s most basic means of survival: food and water.
Focus on Fair Trade posted Jun 30, 2008: These three TransFair USA curricula are designed to help students understand the concept of fair trade and to highlight its values and significance to farmers and communities. Using familiar imported foods—chocolate, bananas and coffee—as the focus, your students will gain an appreciation for the hard work of the farmer and will feel empowered knowing their consumer choices have real impact on real people.
Connect and Engage: Foreign Policy posted Jun 03, 2008: As a teacher, helping your students understand foreign policy requires that you explore other cultures and nations and how they relate to the United States. Here are a couple of curriculum options to help you make that connection.

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