Youth Education Category

Rules of Thumb for Community Safety

Rules of Thumb for Community Safety

Friends Meetings, like all faith communities, are at risk of sexual abuse of children and vulnerable adults.  This one page explanation of the risk is a good conversation starter for Friends meetings seeking to create or strengthen safety policies. Rules of Thumb for...

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Almost American Girl

Almost American Girl

Transitioning from life in Korea to America, a young woman struggles with change and figuring out where she fits. After her mother’s decision to marry a man in Alabama, 14-year-old Chuna, who thought she was just going on another mother-daughter trip, grapples with...

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How Maps Change Things

How Maps Change Things

A Conversation about the Maps We Choose and the World We Want I'd love to see this book in every Quaker home and Friends meeting/church library. It's a surprisingly short and utterly engaging journey from world maps to questions of social justice and it's worth it...

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Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-Ins

Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-Ins

When four courageous black teens sat down at a lunch counter in the segregated South of 1960, the reverberations were felt both far beyond and close to home. This insightful story offers a child's-eye view of this seminal event in the American Civil Rights Movement....

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Say Something

Say Something

Say Something takes us on the short but significant journey from being a silent bystander to an engaged community member with small, simple acts of inclusion like acknowledging a new student in a class or sitting next to someone on the bus. Bullying and teasing can be...

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Weaving Quaker Activists Into First Day Schools

Weaving Quaker Activists Into First Day Schools

Make your Quaker Religious Education come alive! Weave Quaker Activists into your lesson plans bringing a fresh, contemporary voice of lived Quakerism to your Friends Meeting or Church. Use digital technology to invite the world into your classroom in the person of a...

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Bayard Rustin: Troublemaker for Justice

Bayard Rustin: Troublemaker for Justice

A biography for younger readers about one of the most influential activists of our time, who was an early advocate for African Americans and for gay rights. Bayard Rustin was a major figure in the Civil Rights movement. He was arrested on a bus 13 years before Rosa...

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QREC Suggested Religious Education Web Resources

QREC Suggested Religious Education Web Resources

A rich collection of useful websites with curricula and learning materials from many different yearly meetings, Quaker organizations and other educational organizations for teaching all ages. Please use the comment section below to suggest other websites that should...

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Walking in the World as a Friend

Walking in the World as a Friend

"What do we do that makes us Quakers?" Follow how essential Quaker practices weave together the individual, Quaker community and Spirit, creating a unique, vital and transformative dynamic. The 15 short, free videos are great discussion starters. You can purchase...

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Guidelines for Virtual Meetings, Northern Yearly Meeting

Guidelines for Virtual Meetings, Northern Yearly Meeting

The Northern Yearly Meeting (NYM — located in the upper midwest USA) Children and Youth Committee has considered best practices and recommendations related to virtual meetings involving youth. The Covid-19 pandemic has led to widespread use of virtual technologies for...

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Passages: A Guide to Developing a Coming-of-Age Program

Passages: A Guide to Developing a Coming-of-Age Program

Many faiths mark the transition of young people to teenage/adult status with a special process: learning, performance or ceremony. Quakers do not have a particular tradition for doing this. Some Friends have felt a yearning to honor this transition within their...

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Planning Calendar for First Day School 2020/2021

Planning Calendar for First Day School 2020/2021

Building a curriculum plan or “road map” of topics and lessons for the year ahead allows you to gather inspiration, season ideas, seek out adults to teach, and present First Day plans to families. Connecting the themes of lessons from one week to the next gives your...

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Books and Music to Celebrate Earth Day

Books and Music to Celebrate Earth Day

Below is a list of some of our favorite books that are associated with Earth Day. Some books tell about people and the work that they’ve done to help the Earth. Other books share stories to appreciate our beautiful Earth. Each entry has been chosen because it has a...

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The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

Lesson plan for the home with a book and activities. When fourteen-year-old William Kamkwamba's Malawi village was hit by a drought, everyone's crops began to fail. Without enough money for food, let alone school, William spent his days in the library — and figured...

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Mumbet’s Declaration of Independence

Mumbet’s Declaration of Independence

Lesson plan for the home with a book, music and activities — "All men are born free and equal." Everybody knows about the Founding Fathers and the Declaration of Independence in 1776. But the founders weren't the only ones who believed that everyone had a right to...

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Baseball Saved Us

Baseball Saved Us

Lesson plan for the home with a book, video and activities. The Japanese American concentration camp experience during World War II After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Shorty and his family, along with thousands of other Japanese Americans, have been forced to...

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Conversation Circle (March 2020) — Sustainability

Conversation Circle (March 2020) — Sustainability

Topic: Walk Gently Over the Earth: Religious Education for Sustainable Living Friends, young and old, find joy and inspiration in the natural world, yet we are challenged by a mounting environmental crisis. Friends from Quaker Earthcare Witness (QEW) to explore...

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Despair, Hope and the Great Turning

Despair, Hope and the Great Turning

Anxiety about the state of the world is common among young Friends. From the widely acclaimed Powell House Youth Program, this experiential retreat curriculum provides a safe place to voice the fear that burdens so many who seek to live with awareness and...

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 Approved! A Story About Quaker Meeting for Business

 Approved! A Story About Quaker Meeting for Business

How can children work cooperatively to make decisions? Approved! A Story About Quaker Meeting for Business tells of a group of children who want to donate the money they earned selling hot dogs at their Quaker meeting. The story uses simple, clear language and...

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The Mediator’s Handbook

The Mediator’s Handbook

The popular Mediator's Handbook presents a time-tested, adaptable model for helping people work through conflict. Extensively revised to incorporate recent practice and thinking, the accessible manual format lays out a clear structure for new and occasional mediators,...

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