A free, virtual library, International Affairs Resources, has over 2,000 carefully selected, annotated links in 34 international affairs categories. It is frequently maintained, receives worldwide use daily, and is designed for teachers, professors, scholars, students, researchers, diplomats, and the interested public, among others.  This directory is supported by Elizabethtown College, Pennsylvania, USA, and has recently relocated to http://www.internationalaffairsresources.com. (All external links to any former URLs of this site since 1999 will automatically be forwarded to the new URLs…

Fair Trade Campaigns has developed a series of lesson plans to help educators bring the concept of Fair Trade into their middle and high school classrooms. There are four distinct lessons, covering four subject areas in relation to Fair Trade:- Changing the Rules of the Global Economy: An Introduction to Fair Trade - Gender Equity and Fair Trade - Child Labor and Fair Trade - Environmental Sustainability and Fair Trade Each lesson includes several activities, which can be completed individually or as a full, sequential lesson. The lessons come with an accompanying Educator’s Guide which…

Confronting Poverty (confrontingpoverty.org) is a new website that offers a set of resources dealing with American poverty and inequality. Most notable is an interactive "poverty risk calculator" that estimates for the first time the likelihood that an individual will experience poverty at some point in their future. The idea is similar to the heart disease risk calculators that you can find on the Internet. In this case, the data is based on the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (psidonline.isr.umich.edu). But do probabilities dictate a person's fate? That's a compelling question that we…

More people are imprisoned in the United States at this present moment than in any other time or place in history, yet prisons themselves have never felt further away or more out of sight. "The Prison in Twelve Landscapes" is a film about the prison in which we never see an actual penitentiary. A meditation on the prison's "disappearance" in the era of mass incarceration, the film unfolds as a cinematic journey through a series of ordinary places across the United States where prisons affect lives.Learn more at http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/prison-in-twelve-landscapes/.

In this series, a Victorian tenement in the heart of London's East End has been painstakingly brought back to life. A group of 21st century people move in to experience the tough living and working conditions of the Victorian poor in each decade, 1860s through 1900s. To see trailers and episode descriptions, visit http://www.pbs.org/show/victorian-slum-house/. Is this "recreation for television" a useful exercise in understanding the past, or a visual gimmick? Would clips from this series be useful in your classroom teaching? Send your critique to NCSS's newsletter at tssp@ncss.org and we'll…

The 9/11 Memorial Museum invites teachers and students to participate in Anniversary in the Schools, a FREE webinar commemorating the 16th anniversary of 9/11. The webinar, broadcast from inside the 9/11 Memorial Museum, connects students and teachers from around the world with Museum staff and guest speakers to learn about the attacks and the importance of commemoration.Participants will be introduced to exhibitions within the Museum, learn about 9/11 through personal stories about the attacks from a first responder, survivor, and family member, and have the opportunity to ask questions…

National Bird is the first in-depth investigation of the U.S. drone war with unique access to two courageous women, a drone-target analyst and a retired intelligence officer, who connect with a former NSA analyst to become whistleblowers on the drone program, risking backlash. Visit the film's website, http://nationalbirdfilm.com/ This film is part of the INDEPENDENT LENS collection at PBS, www.pbs.org/independentlens.

The New York Times provides "25 Mini-Films for Exploring Race, Bias and Identity With Students" at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/15/learning/lesson-plans/25-mini-films-… There are some opening ads by Exxon-Mobil, but these are short. Lesson plans are here too. These are free downloads. In the introduction to the collection, Michael Gonchar writes (March 25, 2017): "Teachers traditionally turn to literature, history and current events to open up these conversations, but it’s always helpful to have a bigger toolbox to tackle such important and difficult issues. That’s why we pulled…

Elementary and middle school teachers will want to know that The U.S. Mint has announced the release of the 2017 Frederick Douglass National Historic Site quarter, the 37th coin to be released in the "America the Beautiful" Quarters Program. For more information on Frederick Douglass, the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site and the Frederick Douglass NHS Quarter, visit: https://www.usmint.gov/mint_programs/atb/index5965.html?local=FrederickDouglass. And remember that the U.S. Mint has a collection of K-12 lesson plans relating to geography, economics, history, and civics athttps://www.…

The National Park Service’s Cultural Resources Office of Interpretation and Education is happy to announce the publication of its latest teaching resource: "Discover Colonel Young's Protest Ride for Equality and Country: A Lightning Lesson from Teaching with Historic Places." Access it online here:https://www.nps.gov/subjects/teachingwithhistoricplaces/lightning-lesso…. The new Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) lesson offers a packet of materials for middle and upper level students to study the life of African American cavalry officer Colonel Young, his 1918 protest ride from Ohio to DC…