A message from our friends at US Fund for UNICEF:
As you plan your 2015 curricula, please consider opportunities to bring TeachUNICEF to your classroom. TeachUNICEF’s educational resources are easy-to-use tools that foster understanding of the world’s most prevalent issues affecting children. UNICEF works in over 190 countries to save and improve children’s lives, providing health care and immunizations, clean water and sanitation, nutrition, education, emergency relief, and more. We hope that in providing engaging and academically rich materials that offer multiple voices, we can encourage the exploration of critical global issues while presenting opportunities to take action.
What is TeachUNICEF?
TeachUNICEF is a portfolio of free global education programs and resources used by teachers across the United States. UNICEF converts UNICEF’s international data and impact into these pre-K-12 lesson plans, literature, videos, case studies, and multimedia sources. All resources are downloaded at the rate of 4,000 – 8,000 times per month nationally.
Our mission is to support and create well-informed global citizens who understand interconnectedness, respect and value diversity, have the ability to challenge injustice and inequities, and take action in personally meaningful ways. Some topics covered by TeachUNICEF are (for example): Child Trafficking, Gender Equality, MDGs, Water and Environment.
- Global Citizenship Briefs – student magazines!
TeachUNICEF Global Citizenship Briefs are sets of instructional resources on topics of global concern. Centered around a student magazine that explores current issues through informational texts, questions that promote critical thinking, photography from the field, and data analysis exercises involving maps, charts, and graphs, each brief highlights a significant present-day emergency or humanitarian need.
Global Citizenship Briefs are accompanied by a lesson plan and several instructional activities that can be implemented in as little as fifteen minutes, including a take action piece that provides students with ways to demonstrate global citizenship by taking humanitarian action for children around the world. All materials are aligned to National Content and Common Core State Standards for maximum integration into your core curriculum.
For example, our Special Edition: Stop Ebola is a three-page student magazine and brief teacher’s guide that provides students with insight into the causes of Ebola and how the international community is addressing the problem.
- Local Opportunities
As the U.S. Fund for UNICEF’s Boston Community Engagement Fellow, my primary focus is to raise awareness and train constituents on how to take action through UNICEF campaigns. With this said, the Fellow is able to work as creatively as possible to complement your current school projects. Fellows work with schools in the following ways:
- Conduct global education workshops for teachers on TeachUNICEF
- Present to students in classes and assemblies on international topics
- Support classrooms and schools interested in taking action through programs such as UNICEF High School Clubs (there are 14 UNICEF Clubs in Massachusetts)
- Represent UNICEF at internationally-focused events
How can students “Take Action”?
UNICEF’s “Take Action” provides educators, parents, and youth a variety of opportunities to help address critical global issues. Action opportunities range from organizing a UNICEF High School Club to participating in our UNICEF Tap Project. Additionally, a service-learning information sheet provides educators with background information and resources. For further ideas on how to take action, you can download our “4 Fun Ways to Help UNICEF“, targeting toward an elementary audience, or “10 Ways to Support UNICEF“, targeting a teen audience.
Please contact me with any questions or inquiries and I look forward to supporting your goals!
Brian Kelleher-Calnan
Boston Office | UNICEF USA
Community Engagement Fellow
857.453.8015 [email protected]