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Humane Education

Teachers Head Back to School

Sheryl Dickstein Pipe, Ph.D.

Autumn is back-to-school time for kids. But hitting the books need not be reserved for the kindergarten through college set. These days, professionals from many backgrounds are looking for new ways to increase their knowledge and stay current in their chosen fields. Classroom teachers are among these professionals, and there is a growing number of programs to introduce them to humane education.

Bringing the Message to the Classroom

The ASPCA offers New York City teachers a workshop on bringing humane education into the classroom on a regular basis. The workshop proves how easily humane education lessons can be incorporated into many other subject areas, and how these lessons can help students meet local and national curriculum content standards. Each workshop participant receives a copy of the ASPCA's Humane Education Resource Guide for Teachers, which includes many standards-based activities. In addition to the higher learning opportunities offered by the "A," the United Federation of Teachers' Humane Education Committee (www.uft.org) and Humane Education Advocates Reaching Teachers (www.nyheart.org) provide teacher-training opportunities in New York State.

Halfway across the country, Claudia Mishell, humane education manager at the Denver Dumb Friends League (DDFL; www.ddfl.org), holds a teacher recertification class four times a year. The goal of this two-day course, entitled Teaching Compassion and Respect of All Living Things: Humane Education in the Classroom (K-12), is to introduce basic animal welfare issues and demonstrate how to integrate humane education lessons into existing curricula.

Each teacher leaves the course with one semester hour of recertification credit from the Colorado School of Mines and a grade-appropriate hum-ane education curriculum, which was developed by Mishell. She believes that "this course is significant because we spend two full days with these teachers and they really learn why it's important to teach these lessons to their students. Our goal is for the teachers to use this information year after year with hundreds of kids." She also notes that teachers who participate in this class often keep in touch and stay involved with the DDFL years after completing the class.

Web-Assisted Learning

Patty Finch, an innovator in humane education, developed an exciting online program for both humane educators and classroom teachers. Finch trains and mentors teachers-as-trainers, focusing on creative uses of the Internet in education. Her newest endeavor, a volunteer project for the nonprofit organization Vertebrate View called "Lions 'n Tigers 'n Bears...Oh My!" is a free online webquest (a Web-based learning activity) that enables educators to conduct workshops from the computer labs of elementary schools.

The webquest is designed to help teachers learn how to effectively evaluate the level of humane knowledge of animals in a lesson, as well as the level of humane concerns addressed in a lesson about animal-related issues. The workshop also helps educators gauge the level of humane education impact resulting from a lesson and offers them the tools needed to boost these levels within their own lessons. An added bonus: By participating in the workshop, teachers get an in-depth look at one or more humane education issues. Finch says, "One thing I really like about this webquest is the contrast the teachers immediately see - especially with farmed animals - between reality and what we are teaching kids. Some of these realities are only appropriate for teaching at higher grade levels, but teachers will notice that, in the school setting, we hardly ever get to those realities - at any grade level."

As teachers, we remain ever enthusiastic about new learning opportunities. So crack open a fresh notebook, sharpen your pencil and go back to school.

To learn more about planning a "Lions 'n Tigers 'n Bears...Oh My!" workshop, visit http://humanelink.vview.org/educ/webquest/t-index.htm. Materials for participants can be found at http://humanelink.vview.org/educ/webquest/index.htm.

Dr. Pipe is the director of ASPCA Humane Education.

ASPCA Animal Watch - Fall 2002

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