This week I read the concluding chapter of the book Sail The 7 Cs With Microsoft Education. This chapter, Becoming ChangeMakers, was all about how a teacher can create change for his/her students. During the chapter, I was introduced to a website called We.org. We.org is a global organization that is also partnered with Microsoft with a mission to “make doing good doable”. The website has different things to offer to everyone, not just teachers. The WE organization does everything to empower youth and provide them with the right tools to take action in their school and community. The website is also great for educators & future educators to look over to learn the different ways they can be a changemaker in their classroom. There are different page links on the different sections of the website and once on one of those pages, there are different tools and training courses one can take/use towards their lives as teachers.
As I was exploring through the website I came across a page called “Educator Resources”. On this page, they have lesson plans, activities, etc., that are designed to help educators better their curriculum and get students to broader their understanding of world issues. The one resource they provided was a library of resources, that page would not load so I decided to download a classroom recourse overview handbook that was linked on the page. In the handbook, they had different learning experiences that can be taught for each grade level. One that I found interseting is Advocating for Children’s Rights, which they described as “students exploring the United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child and discover how rights are being denied to young children”. Ideas they gave to teach this as a lesson is through picture books, case studies, and personal narratives. As someone who wants to teach second or third grade, I would want my students to understand that some children are not getting the rights that they may have. I would use the picture books to get my students to learn about the rights and the children that are being denied.
If you are an educator or future educator I definitely recommend reading through this entire website!
*PSA: some of the pages on the website are down for “construction” until November 20th, 2020*