Resource: Helping Kids Care.
Published by: The Institute for Peace and Justice and Meyer Stone Books James and Kathleen McGinnis founded the Institute for Peace and Justice as resource outlet for families, schools, and faith communities to foster peace and justice in the world. Their resources are multi-culturally focused.
Learners
The focus group is children ages 8-12, but can be used in an intergenerational setting.
Goals
or Objectives
To help children experience peace and justice at their level and in their own environment.
Theology
For
this resource mission or service is termed peacemaking.
For this resource peacemaking occurs when people of different skills,
cultures, and ages learn how
to appreciate and work cooperatively with one another. This occurrence is the resources theology of mission/service. Also, important to note is that everything this resource deals with is viewed through a Christian theological viewpoint.
Content
and Structure
The
resource is divided into four themes: Peacemaking, Global Awareness, Aging
Awareness, and Disability Awareness.
The
activities do not include Biblical study, so that must be done by the director
or teacher if desired.
Theological reflection is implicit in the resource because it is written
with a Christian theological basis.
The
children do a wide variety of activities. These
activities include puppetry, drama, discussion, games, writing activities,
chanting, art, and reading activities.
The
resource includes lesson plans, activity ideas, a resource list for each
section, and there are two teacher instructional video tapes that can be
purchased as a separate resource from the book.
There is no specific time frame given for any of the lessons.
Setting
This
resource could be used in variety of settings including general education,
religious education, and intergenerational workshops and camps.
Some
situations in which one may want to use the resource are in conflict situations,
non-conflict situation, for diversity awareness, and in response to the events
of September 11, 2001.
The
resource requires at least one teacher/leader for each group of children one
will have. It would be helpful for
the teacher to be familiar with the curriculum as well as the subject matter of
Peacemaking.
One will need enough space to move around in comfortably. One will also need art materials, puppets, musical instruments, and audio/video equipment.
Strengths
The
content of the resource is pertinent to the state of our country and world
today.
It
uses a variety of teaching styles and methods to help learners work together and
learn about diversity and peacemaking.
While some of the examples given for discussion are dated, they can be translated to current situations. For example they illustrate “tug-o’-war” between the U.S.A and the U.S.S.R, which could be changed to U.S.A and Afghanistan.
Weaknesses
There
are no specific lesson plans to follow. The
director or teacher has to put together their own lesson using the activities
and discussion questions given for each theme.
While
the themes are very relevant to today there are themes/issues that are missed
because of time when this resource was written.
It would take extra work on the part of the director/teacher to make the Biblical and theological connections explicit.
