Anti-Bullying Curriculum Shows Kids How to Share the World
When young children learn kindness to animals, they take a key step toward rejecting violence, bullying, and hatred in their teens and beyond. To help kids reach this goal, TeachKind—PETA’s humane-education division—has revamped its popular classroom resource, the Share the World curriculum kit, and is sending free copies to 26,000 elementary schools both nationwide and in Toronto, Canada.
Whether it’s empowering students by teaching them about the kind choices they can make in their everyday lives or highlighting animals’ “superpowers,” such as an octopus’ ability to change color as a means of communication, Share the World is packed with kid-friendly ways to follow the Golden Rule and respect and help animals as well as each other.
This updated kit comes amid a national youth epidemic of bullying and abuse of fellow humans and animals. In just the last few months alone, a 10-year-old boy in Tennessee reportedly stabbed his puppy multiple times in the face, causing the animal to lose an eye; a girl on a Delaware beach lured gulls to her with food and then allegedly beat one of the birds to death with a plastic shovel; two children in Maryland allegedly tried to kill two kittens by submerging them in water and throwing them against a dumpster; and a 17-year-old in Pennsylvania reportedly helped strap an M-80 firecracker to a live turtle’s shell and then blew up the animal.
There are many more cases of children deliberately harming animals, and such acts are often the precursor to cruelty toward humans, from bullying to cases of extreme violence. Share the World aims to stamp out this cycle of abuse by teaching empathy early on so that students grow up to be kind, productive members of society.
The curriculum kit includes a 23-minute DVD, colorful classroom posters, a teacher’s guide, worksheets and activities, and a kindness pledge for students. Share the World is free and available in English and Spanish—and it can be used to help meet Common Core standards in education.
What You Can Do
Help bring empathy and compassion to kids everywhere. Use Share the World in your classroom or recommend the program to your child’s teacher. Order your free kit today!
