Helping Educators be Successful

The challenges of the 21st century require us to develop a global outlook and a global understanding. We need to help students be aware of their own values and views, respectful of others, wise about how to make healthy change, and able to act compassionately toward others , toward themselves, and toward the planet on which we live.

Learning about war and conflict should not be an afterthought or alternative to the curricula that educators offer in their classrooms. Instead, it is at the heart of the global education required of all of us. This focus on helping students find their voices brings the learning process alive, makes history real, makes literature matter, makes social studies vibrant and relevant.

• DVD of the film: Voices in Wartime.
• Voices in Wartime Anthology: a book of poems, original essays, and narratives from the interviews conducted during the making of the film.
• Curriculum: four modules that use poetry, and indirectly history, other writings and the arts to teach about the legacy of conflict and war.
• Teacher Workshops to support educators in successfully introducing the film and curricula into high and college classrooms.

Why an Education Project?

All of us - parents and children, soldiers and civilians, students and teachers - are affected by conflict in our lives that leads, on a collective level, to war. By understanding the mechanism of conflict, we may be able to move beyond the seeming inevitability of war. The Education Project offers tools, philosophies, and learning methods that will help young people understand the roots of conflict and the trauma of war, confront the pain and fear at the heart of conflict, and help to build healthy human communities in the wake of war.

Around the world, in neighborhoods and schoolyards, cities and countries, we can lay the basis for a more hopeful world by creating a new type of conversation in which all voices can be heard, and all points of view included, without engendering fear, hatred, or anger. Difference can lead to dialogue and growth rather than violence.

Partner to sponsor Teacher Workshops

The Voices in Wartime Film

All curricula modules in the series are an outgrowth of the film, Voices in Wartime, a documentary that uses poetry to move us to the emotion of war explained by soldiers, civilians, journalists and medical personnel who have experienced the effects of combat firsthand. And through the hearts and emotions of those who have stayed at home, observed vicariously and mourned the fallen.

The film Voices in Wartime gives the gut-wrenching experience of war a fresh perspective. It steps away to look at all wars–not just the conflicts currently in the news. The terrible beauty of the poetry is our guide, distilling the grim realities and diverse emotions of war. History and literature have shown us that in times of war, poets can lead us to greater truths and that the power of poetry can help us understand the trauma, violence and death caused by armed conflict.

In the film, as in the modules, poetry illuminates the reality. The reality observed in the documentary helps us to better understand the poetry. Together they sear the experience, emotions and sacrifices of war into our hearts and minds.

How to Use Voices of Wartime Education Project materials

Secondary school and college instructors can use all three components of the Voices in Wartime Education Project to inform and supplement their literature, arts and humanities and social studies offerings, or to structure new offerings for their departments.

For secondary teachers activities, questions, and research opportunities presented in the modules correspond directly to all twelve standards for English Language Arts as presented by the National Council of Teachers of English; selected standards for arts education as outlined in the National Standards for Art Education; and selected standards for the teaching of world history as outlined by The National Center for History in the Schools. These standards are addressed at the beginning of each of the modules.

It is recommended that the documentary Voices of Wartime be shown initially as a lead-in to working with the material in the modules, even if only one of the modules has been selected for study. If the module is to be used in conjunction with a specific theme, then it is appropriate to view the documentary at the beginning of the course of study and refer back to portions of the documentary that support the topics being engaged. For example, Voices in Wartime explores the works of British poets Owen and Sassoon in some detail. If the film was seen in its entirety either as an opening to studying war generally, or specifically studying British Literature, then only the section on British poets in the Great War module may be used in the classroom.

The Voices in Wartime Anthology, A Collection of Narratives and Poems provides in depth interviews offered by those individuals who appear in the documentary, detailed essays by noted experts in the field of poetry, war and survival, and poems used in the film or gathered to illuminate the theme of poetry in wartime. The Anthology can be used as a primary textbook in an advanced literature class at the secondary level or as a primary text at the college level.

>>> How does the Curricula support State and National Standards?

Featured Curricula

The Great War. Over 140 pages of classroom projects, research ideas, poetry and biographies of poets, maps, chronologies, stories, images and essays.