Frame a Special Item
Students identify an object that holds special meaning and learn about each other by sharing the stories of these special items.
Stories of Identity and Belonging
Students read and discuss personal narrative essays and consider what factors can make it challenging for young people to be who they really want to be in the world.
Cultivating Identity Literacy
Students learn about a project, created by two young adults, that engaged people across the country in conversations about race, identity, and culture. Then they start to envision what sharing their own stories can look, sound, and feel like.
Use Poetry To Teach About Identity
Celebrate National Poetry Month with this mini-lesson that uses poetry to help students grapple with the complexities of identity and inspire them to tell their own stories.
What Is Our Obligation To Asylum Seekers?
Help students understand how the United States’ complex asylum process works. Invite them to consider the question, who has an obligation to asylum seekers?
Brave Girl Rising: A Refugee Story
Created in partnership with Girl Rising, this lesson invites students to engage with the story of a young refugee and to consider the power of storytelling to spark empathy.
Create a Toolbox for Care
This mini-lesson invites students to think about the “tools” they have access to during the coronavirus pandemic that can help them take care of themselves, others, and their wider community.
What is Power?
Students define power and then analyze five perspectives about power in order to understand its many sources and the different ways it can be experienced.
Introducing Agency
Students explore the concept of agency, both in literature and in life, and examine the societal forces that play a role in an individual’s agency.
Agency, Choice, and Action
Students apply their thinking about power and agency to an analysis of four personal narrative essays written by young people.
The Power of Belonging
Students discuss the first half of Bethany Morrow’s short story “As You Were” and create character maps as a way of exploring the character of Ebony’s identity and sense of belonging in her school community.