News & Events

Revamping World Olympics

Even the best lessons can get stale. That’s why in our trainings, we encourage educators to habitually reevaluate even their favorite lessons and see how they can be improved, whether it’s incorporating messages of social justice or religious diversity, or differentiating for diverse learning styles. And we do the same thing with the lessons we’ve created – periodically turning back to them and giving them our best thinking.

For the past couple months our Education team has been doing just that with World Olympics, an after-school curriculum for grades K-6 that explores global cultures, sportspersonship, teamwork, and respectful behavior through the lens of the Olympic Games.
The new and improved 2011 edition is almost ready to be published. Until then, here are a couple of the new resources we’re using to make some of our favorite lessons better:

-As part of our lesson on Olympic Mascots, we explore how U.S. sports teams continue to use stereotypical images of Native Americans as their mascots. We’re now including the NCAA’s Guidelines for the Use of Native American Mascots.

-We’ve updated the curriculum with information on the history, games, mascots and more of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

Stay tuned!