Curriculum and Resources: Facing the Future
Facing the Future is committed to developing young people’s capacity and commitment to create thriving, sustainable, and peaceful local and global communities. Its curriculum, publications, and service-learning projects,written and reviewed by a team of professional curriculum writers, teachers, and students, offer a brilliant balance of academic standards, global understanding, and personal action.
YES! recommends Facing the Future resources for its approach to sustainability and its inclusion of a variety of learners. FTF examines sustainability not just through the environment as does the average American but also through issues of population, consumption, poverty, and conflict. And, learning opportunities are broad, from K to high school to university, and including English Language Learners and special education. As one teacher said, “Facing the Future focuses on relevant material that affects all people. It is not generic or contrived material that we pump into our students’ brains, rather it is material that allows for student growth on an independent and holistic level.” Simply said, Facing the Future is not just about facing the future, it’s about about making a healthy and vital future.
There is a range of lessons for grades K-12, including some projects for university students. Here is a sample of what’s available:
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In this 3-hour lesson for high school students, Livin’ the Good Life helps students understand the connection between the quality of life and global issues, such as sustainability, inequality, poverty, and good governance. It begins with examination and debate of what the good life is. Do people who make more money have a better quality of life? If everyone in the world was “livin’ the good life,” what would we have in common?
Students not only will develop their own list of life indicators, but also will create and conduct a quality of life survey. Data will be analyzed and results will be presented to their peers. This activity will surely stimulate dynamic conversations in and outside the classroom.
Rational Numbers: Financial Decisions connects middle students and their personal spending habits with financial decisions facing countries. In this lesson, students will work with fractions and percents, learn how interest works, and understand how nations make and spend money. Ultimately, their newly found knowledge will enable them to answer questions like “How might higher interest rates affect a country’s ability to invest in things like expanding education and improving health care?"
Your students are climate change aware. Now, here’s an opportunity for them to fuse dynamic ideas with action. Be inspired by the many climate change projects taking place in your community and state and around the globe. Have your students replicate or create a service-learning project that is the right fit for them.
SEE MORE: Service Learning Resources
DOWNLOAD: Service Learning Framework
In this world of doom of gloom, students want to feel hopeful. Service-learning is a powerful way to educate and showcase solutions in positive, unique terms. It is also one of the best educational tools to motivate students to learn more and to bridge that connection between course concepts and the real world.
To get started, take a look at FTF’s service-learning framework. This manual will take you through a checklist of steps designed to plan and execute a service-learning project that matches your students’ interests, capabilities, and time availability.
Facing the Future (FTF) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating and motivating today’s students to be responsible stewards of tomorrow’s world. Highly regarded by educators, FTF develops and delivers standards-based, hands-on lessons, student textbooks, curriculum units, and professional development opportunities for educators that promote critical thinking on global issues, sustainability, and positive solutions. Facing the Future curriculum is used in all 50 U.S. states and over 100 countries by teachers and students in grades K-12, in undergraduate and graduate classes, and across multiple subject areas. In 2008, Facing the Future reached more than 1,000,000 students through its programming.
The above resources accompany the November 2009 YES! Education Connection Newsletter
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