Guide

Strategies for Parents & Teens: Current Events

Explore strategies for reflection, discussion, and more to engage with your children and help them process current events.

Last Updated: September 12, 2023

Guide

Language

English — US

Subject

Advisory

Propaganda
Democracy & Civic Engagement

Strategies for Parents & Teens: Current Events

Date of Publication: August 2023

Download this resource for free. By signing up for a Facing History account, you can access this and other resources. You'll also be able to save items for later and build collections for your class. It's fast, easy, and free!

Between traditional media and ever-growing online sources, the constant stream of news and information has never been more accessible for adults and children alike. Though safeguards can be implemented to shield young people from especially troubling content, it is inevitable that they will come across disturbing or upsetting news and other content that they may need support to process and understand.

To help parents navigate conversations around current events, Facing History & Ourselves and Harvard University’s Making Caring Common Project have partnered with The Choose Kindness Project to create this resource. In this guide, parents of middle and high school students will find strategies for reflection, discussion, and more to engage with their children and help them process current events.

Mini-Lesson

This is the second mini-lesson in a two-part series on the impact of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and DALL-E on education.

Students in classroom work on their laptops.

Mini-Lesson

Help students develop healthy habits for protecting their mental health while staying informed and taking action.

Diverse group of teen college students ignoring each other looking at mobile phones checking social media

Unit

This unit is designed to help students in the UK reflect on how Islamophobia manifests in contemporary society and what needs to be done to challenge it.

Lesson

Students explore the roots of Islamophobia, reflect on its human cost and its impact on those who experience it, and start thinking about the importance of standing up against Islamophobia.

Uniformed high school students read at their desks.

Lesson

Students explore Islamophobic tropes, their troubled history, their evolution and their present manifestation in further depth, and consider the harm that their circulation can cause.

Picture of students working in a classroom.

Lesson

Students reflect on how Islamophobia manifests in the media and in the entertainment industry, and the potential consequences of being exposed to Islamophobic content.

Photograph of student in uniform working on a worksheet in class

Lesson

Students learn how Islamophobia intersects with misogyny and the impact that this has on the treatment of Muslim women.

Lesson

Students reflect on the impact of Islamophobia on Muslims’ sense of belonging, consider what can be done to foster integration, and explore ways in which they and others can challenge Islamophobia.