What Should You Do When You Feel Prejudice Against Others?

Feeling prejudice against someone because of their race is pretty foreign to me, but this past weekend I was blindsided by a tsunami of my own prejudice. My husband and I had finished a walk in Acadia National Park near where we live, and I heard a group of people speaking Russian – a language I’ve studied,…

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There’s a Path When Times Are Dark

I’m writing this post on the Winter Solstice – the longest night of the year. As I watched the sunrise this morning, and as the vermilion clouds put on the stunning show captured in this photograph, I felt my usual complex feelings on this day. The first day of winter, when we enter the coldest…

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Humane Education Through History, Art, and Inspiration: An Interview with Robert Shetterly

Introduction: After graduating from college and moving to Maine in 1970, Robert Shetterly taught himself drawing, printmaking, and painting, becoming an illustrator at newspapers and of approximately 30 books. After the 9/11 attacks, Rob painted a portrait of Walt Whitman, etching a quote from Whitman on the painting. Thus began his Americans Who Tell the…

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Schools are becoming an epicenter of culture wars, but there is a solution to the conflicts

School board members are receiving death threats. School board meetings have become shouting matches. The national news is regularly reporting about the most local of politics—school board elections in tiny districts. The two primary topics causing all this conflict are COVID-based mandates for masking and/or vaccination and teaching about racism in social studies classes. This post is about…

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solutionary

Be part of the solution

Zoe Weil is a blogger for Psychology Today, and we share her blog posts with you here. Despite the fervent hopes of so many that the dawn of 2021 would quickly turn the page on the traumas of 2020, we should not have been surprised that the year got off to such a dangerous and violent start….

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blog post

If We Truly Teach Civics and Let 16 Year Olds Vote, We Can Save Democracy

Zoe Weil is a blogger for Psychology Today, and we share her blog posts here. Enjoy!  Approximately 65 percent of eligible Americans voted this month in what many considered the most consequential presidential election of our lifetime. This was the largest percentage in more than a century. Although an improvement, this falls far short of…

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Teaching About Issues Related to Elections and Voting

Resources for Teaching About Issues Related to Elections and Voting

by Marsha Rakestraw I don’t ever remember seeing as much discussion, passion, vitriol, or engagement as I have with this election period in the U.S. Elections may be a regular thing, and voting may be one of our (mostly) fundamental rights, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything easy about exploring these issues. Especially in classrooms,…

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