Meena

Bringing Humane Education to Classrooms: An interview with Meena Alagappan, Esq.

Meena Alagappan is the Executive Director of Humane Education Advocates Reaching Teachers (HEART), a nonprofit public charity that is a full-service humane education provider in the NYC, Chicago, and Indianapolis areas. In addition to HEART’s work in these cities, HEART’s free humane education resources are downloaded by thousands of teachers across the U.S. and beyond….

Read more »
blog post

Parents as Humane Educators During COVID-19: An Interview with Gwen Frisbie-Fulton, M.Ed.

Gwen Frisbie-Fulton received her M.Ed. degree through IHE’s graduate program and lives in Greensboro, North Carolina. Her thesis at IHE looked at the value and use of storytelling as a tool for social change. Gwen is a mother and activist and works as the Communications Director at Down Home North Carolina, a grassroots advocacy group…

Read more »
solutionary

The Solutionary Students of Oceanside: An Interview with Mitch Bickman and Laura Trongard

Mitch Bickman is the Director of Social Studies in the Oceanside School District and is the recipient of the 2016 New York State Social Studies Supervisory Association’s Supervisor of the Year Award. This award is given to professionals who have demonstrated the highest commitment to social studies education in New York State and have established…

Read more »
A classroom of students and their teacher

Defining Your Purpose as a Teacher

by Zoe Weil At the beginning of the teachers’ workshops I lead, I often facilitate an activity that invites participants to reflect upon their true mission as educators. Their personal missions always differ from the US Department of Education’s, which is “to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and…

Read more »
woman looking into rows and columns of screens, each of which has a different person on it

11 Activities to Help Students Understand Different Perspectives

by Marsha Rakestraw In mid-January, two boys, ages 12 and 13, killed more than 500,000 bees and destroyed tens of thousands of dollars of property. Allegedly just for kicks. In December 2017, a young Muslim woman was attacked on a transit train in Vancouver, Canada. Most people watched; only one young man intervened. Incidences of…

Read more »
Human Rights Graduate Program Institute for Humane Education

8 Resources for Teaching About Unconscious Bias

by Marsha Rakestraw We all have biases. We’ve heard many times that those biases are an evolutionary adaptation that helped us survive, but even after these thousands of years, we haven’t yet learned to recognize and overcome many of our unconscious (and conscious) biases related to race, gender, disability, age, geography, and even species. Research…

Read more »
class

5 Simple Tips for Creating a Compassionate Classroom

by Samantha Gentrup As teachers get ready for the school year, we have to decide what our classrooms will look like and what our rules and procedures will be. We essentially have to create our classroom culture. What can we do to make sure we build a classroom of kindness and compassion for all beings?…

Read more »