Teaching Tolerance In the Classroom

Recent events in Charlottesville may have you thinking about what more you can do to help students become tolerant and fair-minded adults.  At least as important as your subject matter is the classroom environment you create, one with patience, understanding and love — fertile ground for growing just citizens.

Regardless of age level, the following sites offer resources for both learning environments and course content that are worth exploring.

You can search specific subjects on PBS LearningMedia such as “classroom environments,” “social justice,” or “hate groups.”  Also, when your search yields large numbers of resources, you can narrow them by grade and resource type or by selecting a specific subject and continuing to hone in on what you need.  For example, starting with a search of “PBS Newshour,” which yields many hundreds of results, you can filter “social studies,” then “civics and government,” then “American political systems” to “American identity & diversity,” which results in smaller numbers of resources to peruse.

You can also look into Teaching Tolerance:  A Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization “dedicated to reducing prejudice, improving intergroup relations and supporting equitable school experiences for our nation’s children,” which offers free resources to educators across the country.

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