UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — In recent years, the K-12 instruction of difficult topics such as racism and gender has posed mounting challenges for educators around the country. To support them, Penn State’s Hammel Family Human Rights Initiative has produced a free, asynchronous, self-paced online module.
Pennsylvania educators who complete “Teaching Difficult Issues,” which takes about six hours, will earn six Act 48 hours. In many other states, teachers receive the equivalent in professional development credits by showing their certificate of completion to their administrators.
“We know that educators are struggling to navigate difficult issues,” said the initiative’s assistant director, Danielle Butville, who led the module’s creation. “They’re unsure if they should lean in and address them or lean away. In response, we’ve created an online professional learning module to provide support in understanding how to make those ‘in the moment’ decisions.”
The module offers participants strategies to facilitate and engage in planned and unplanned discussions about difficult topics.
“Absent educationally sound learning in schools, many young people are left to engage with difficult issues on social media, where they are probably likely to encounter extremist manipulation more than responsible information,” said Penn State College of Education Associate Professor Scott Metzger, an affiliate faculty member of the initiative and an author of the module. “I think teachers want to help but may feel like they lack the tools, confidence, or public support. It's our hope that the professional learning modules produced by the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Education Initiative will give teachers the help they need to confidently and robustly teach and discuss difficult topics in the classroom.”
This is the initiative’s second online module. The first links trauma-informed professional learning with pedagogy. Its topics range from creating a trauma-informed classroom to paying greater attention to self-care. Resources, including visual and auditory, guide users through the sections.
“Although we prefer to interact face-to-face with educators, we want to meet them where they are, and support as many as possible,” said the initiative’s founding director, Boaz Dvir, an associate professor in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State. “So, we’re building an online suite of offerings that can serve participants in our year- and semester-long programs as well as those we have yet to meet in person.”
Next on the Initiative’s list is a similar online module to help educators effectively use media in the instruction of difficult topics.
Besides Butville, Metzger and Dvir, the “Teaching Difficult Issues” creation team included Logan Rutten and Erin Morgart. Other contributors included, in alphabetical order, are Kristin Bittner, Molly Dallmeyer, Elham Hajesmaeili, Jin Han, Dean Marie Hardin, Elizabeth Hinchcliff, Whitney Justice, Dean Kim Lawless, Tiyanjana Maluwa, Robyn Rydzy, Kayleen Sidisky, Melissa Stanley, Stacy Sterndale, Elana Weinstein, Jen Wilson, Tom Wilson and Rebecca Woolfrey.
Based at the Bellisario College, the Hammel Family Human Rights Initiative helps educators navigate a variety of difficult topics and issues, including human rights abuses and trauma.