Humane Education Advocates Reaching Teachers Inc

Programs: Student programs:heart's humane living program covers a wide range of social justice, animal protection and environmental preservation issues. We offer the humane living program to students in k-12 in four age-appropriate versions: k-2nd grade, 3rd-5th grade, middle school, and high school. Heart's specially trained educators teach these lessons in a format that is adapted to meet the needs of different schools, youth centers and student populations. In 2017, heart reached more than 4,400 students in the new york city, chicago, indianapolis, detroit, madison (wisconsin), princeton (new jersey), and portland (oregon) areas. We offered multi-lesson instructional and service-based programs in-school, after-school, and in summer camps. We also facilitated many experiential learning projects where students put their values into action. We taught summer programs in nyc, chicago, and indianapolis and co-sponsored a successful climate camp. In addition, our "be the change" interactive humane education museum within the peace learning center in indianapolis, with over 30 engaging exhibits, continued to draw hundreds of visitors of all ages over the course of the year.

educational resource development and distribution:heart worked on developing various educational resources in the past year. We completed a new comprehensive humane education resource guide for k-5 teachers called "justice for all: educating youth for social responsibility. " the content supports social-emotional growth, delving deeply into real world topics related to diverse human, animal, and environmental topics. This 300 page guide contains 31 standards-aligned activities and lessons with all student materials included and ready to use. The resource is designed to help educators, in both traditional and non-traditional settings, empower youth to gain a deeper understanding of pressing contemporary issues that impact us and confront them using empathy, critical thought, and innovation. In addition, in 2017 heart began development of a comprehensive humane education resource guide for secondary students, expected to be released in may of 2018. We also continued to distribute our previous humane education resource guide with 40 animal protection lessons and activities for k-12. It has now been viewed by thousands of educators in more than 30 countries and over 40 states. We continued expanding our digital initiatives through lesson sharing platforms, indexing our lessons to numerous national learning standards to make them more accessible and usable by teachers nationwide. In addition, we used social media platforms popular with teachers to build a community of humane educators and raise awareness of heart's lessons. We also became content partners with nearpod, which is a student facing platform providing interactive presentation and assessment tools that can be used in engaging ways by teachers in the classroom in a 1:1 lesson delivery platform. These digital expansions have enabled our resources to reach thousands more students and educators. One of our most innovative digital efforts began in 2017 to develop a digital educational adventure game where our compassionate investigators in training investigate humane issues around the world, learning important ways to protect animals. In this first game called "case of the sick puppy," students will uncover the reality behind the puppy mill industry. The game is expected to be released in march of 2018 and will be playable through our website. We also provided specialized curriculum development for schools and non-profit agencies to expand the humane living program to meet specific needs. We worked with animal haven shelter to develop new programming for 5-8 year old children, emphasizing experiential learning and service projects. We developed additional assembly, library, after-school and summer camp programming. We also added to resources on our website, including our humane book lists and library of archived heart teacher training webinars, which are available for free download.

teacher training:heart reached hundreds of teachers and future educators through numerous workshops. One of our major teacher training projects was a credit-bearing 36-hour humane education professional development course we conducted through the nyc doe that qualified schoolteachers toward a salary differential. This online course has the rigor of a graduate level course. We also extended our reach nationally by continuing to offer our free bimonthly webinar series in which we train participants to teach humane education. Through various partnerships, we trained volunteer teachers, animal activists and concerned citizens to conduct lessons both in schools and in out-of-school venues like libraries and community centers. For example, in chicago we conducted credit-bearing professional development workshops through wits (working in the schools) on humane books and teaching conflict resolution skills in the classroom. We also trained teaching artists from the chicago jazz philharmonic in activities to help students manage conflicts peacefully. We partnered with the detroit zoological society and the humane society of huron valley to offer metro-detroit area teachers a workshop on enhancing science and literacy skills through humane education. Participants earned continuing education hours that could be applied toward their certification renewal. Heart presented on the connection between social-emotional learning and humane education at the association of professional humane educators' national conference in seattle. At the educators' network for social justice conference in milwaukee, we offered a workshop on teaching students to take action for child farmworkers. We presented on using humane education strategies to teach food justice at animal place's annual farmed animal conference in california. We also conducted customized in-person training workshops for volunteers at different animal organizations.

marketing, social media and advocacy:during the year heart continued a program focused on gaining as wide an audience for our materials as possible. We maintained a regularly scheduled release of blogs and social media updates on our programs and on the subject matter included in our lessons and activities. In addition we maintained our advocacy efforts to both promote and facilitate compliance with existing humane education laws.