While I’m not naive enough to believe we will ever live in a world void of hate, I do think we can mitigate the hatred through education. Educators have the best chance of molding young minds and making future generations more tolerant of one another’s differences. In this post, I’m sharing some of my favorite resources for bringing tolerance into the classroom (be it live or virtual). 

If you have any great resources, be sure to share them in the comments. 

Teaching Tolerance 

This is the best place to start. The Teaching Tolerance website is a great resource for a variety of topics from race and ethnicity to gender and sexuality. I love the “Build a Learning Plan” feature on this site as well. You can find texts based on a topic. These texts could be poems, articles, videos or short stories. Next, you can choose the type of activity that you would like to do with these texts. I lose track of time whenever I’m on this site. 

Free film kits are also available to order and some are available for streaming. Each comes with a viewing guide to help integrate into your lesson plan. An Outrage is particularly apropos right now. 

There are some great printable posters on this site too. 

Scholastic ID: Voice, Vision, Identity Program 

While this resource isn’t free, it’s definitely worth asking your school administrator or librarian if there is funding available to purchase the collection. I used the ID collection with my students for juvenile detention centers and this anthology was the only thing that truly engaged them and made them excited to read.

The ID collection comes with ID anthology books, several novels, classroom presentations and lesson plans. Many of the topics deal with identity through racism and other adversities. 

NEA: United Nations Day

This site has resources to teach the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights in the classroom. 

NEH: Edsitement

Here, you have to do a little digging, but you can find some interesting topics that examine American culture and values. I usually have to do some tweaking to the lesson plans that I pull from the Edsitement page. It’s a good place to go to get some new ideas.