 Hello, good afternoon to everybody or good morning for those further west and welcome to this webinar for teachers on how schools can join this year's Peace Day Challenge virtually. I'm Megan Chablowski and I am a program officer here at the US Institute of Peace with the public education team, where I lead our work with American K to 12 schools. We are really glad to have you join us and we all at USIP deeply appreciate your work as educators at all times, but especially now at the start of the school year in the midst of a pandemic. Before we get started a few logistics. You are all in listening mode, but we'd still like to hear from you. So if you run your mouse over the bottom of the zoom call screen, you will see several ways to communicate. Please use the chat box to share or comment. You can use the Q&A box to ask questions. Feel free to do so throughout this webinar, and I'll try to answer questions as they come in. We'll also have some time at the end for anything you'd like to discuss. If you have a tech issue, please use the chat function to let us know and we'll try to work with you to fix it. Finally, we will be recording today's webinar to make it available to our website afterwards. So, as we get started, and to give us all a sense of who's joining, I would love if those who are participating could jump into the chat box and tell us where you're tuning in from and maybe what you teach. I'd love to give us a sense of who is on the call today. And it's always nice to see. So if you are able to type into the chat box, I'd love to see where you're all tuning in from. Hawaii, you won the award. It's very early. Thank you for joining. New Hampshire, great. Hello, welcome. Idaho, fantastic. Welcome. Ohio, great. New Hampshire, great. And geography, fantastic, so great. Okay. Okay, well, it looks like we've got a good mix. Thank you for joining. For those of you who are new to us, I wanted to give you a quick sense of who USIP is. So we are a national nonpartisan independent institute founded by Congress in 1984 and dedicated to the proposition that a world without violent conflict is possible, practical and essential for US and global security. We are headquartered in Washington DC, just off the National Mall. So you can see our building here is the one with the swooping roof and from a certain angle looks like a dove. But our work mainly takes place internationally, which is the focus of our mandate. We work with governments and citizens in conflict zones abroad to prevent, manage and resolve violent conflict from training women peace leaders in Columbia and mediation skills to supporting reconciliation efforts in Iraq. The peace process in Afghanistan and young peace builders from Nigeria, Syria, Pakistan and other countries affected by violent extremism. We support those who are working to build a more peaceful inclusive world. So you can learn more about our work, and you can find stories of people who are working to build peace in some of the world's most difficult places on our website at www.usip.org. Complimenting our work to build peace internationally, the US Institute of Peace also serves the American people directly through our public education. So this too is part of our mandate from Congress. We work with schools, universities organizations and communities across the United States to engage everyday Americans and learning about and working for peace. So we are here today to talk about one way your school and you can get involved in this work, and that's by taking up this year's peace day challenge. So I'm really excited that this is something that is of interest to you. The peace day challenge exists to raise the profile of the International Day of Peace, which falls on September 21 every year. So the purpose of the peace day challenge is to affirm peace as a real life alternative to the violence that we see every day in the world. It is an inspiring opportunity for people across the United States and around the world to join us in both taking an action to make peace possible and sharing it on social media. So since launching in 2015, it's reached over 135 countries and all 50 United States engaged hundreds of schools and dozens of organizations, and inspired over 14,000 social media posts from high profile individuals and from a broad public audience reaching tens of millions of people. So from a peace summit at the American University of Afghanistan to radio programs in Nigeria, interfaith exchanges in Burma, activities in Tunisia, Senegal and more peace builders around the world, including the Dalai Lama have taken up the peace day challenge. And so have of course schools, organizations and communities across the United States. So, I wonder if anyone on this call has participated before maybe in the chat box if you've done the peace day challenge in previous years if you could indicate it, because it's always nice to know and if not, that's great that's why you're here. But I'd love to see if anyone has so just drop a quick line if you have in the chat box and that will give me a good sense. Okay. Good it's looking like this might be the first year for everybody that's great. Okay. Well, we know that this September looks different from previous years, and that taking up something extra this month might feel like a really big lift. So, the idea of this webinar was to share with you a few ideas about how you can virtually and easily participate this year, and why you might want to do so. So from the many people have participated over the years, we've learned that the peace day challenge matters for a number of reasons. First, it amplifies peace building work taking place around the world, especially in countries that are better known for violence. It shares the stories that you don't see behind the headlines that dominate the news. It also shows peace as a practical and real alternative to violence. It makes peace something real realistic. It shows that there are practical steps you can take. And it empowers us all to build peace through everyday action. It's an opportunity to talk about peace as something as something possible something realistic, and that's something utopian or idealistic. It also provides everyone with an opportunity to join in an effort bigger than ourselves, knowing that there are thousands of people taking up the peace day challenge and sharing their activities online every year from across the United States and around the world can be a really empowering moment. And it gives us a chance to show that in a year like no other in this unusual year, peace is still possible. And that's a really powerful message. From teachers and students who participated each year, we've heard about some of the impact this has had on schools. It gives students hope and provides them with positive stories and examples. It reminds them that we all have a power to make a difference. And it sets a really positive tone and expectation for the start of the school year and beyond. You can see a couple quotes here just from a few of the teachers we've worked with in the past, who were always pleasantly surprised by the great ideas and enthusiasm that their students bring to this effort. And in fact, many schools go on to participate in the peace day challenge year after year. We hear from teachers that students will come to them asking what they're going to be doing this year and that they start to take on ownership over these activities, which is exactly what we would hope for. So it can take on a life of its own. And in fact, sometimes teachers have come to us and said, I didn't realize I was going to be the peace teacher year after year. So it's something that hopefully will become a real activity that your school engages in. So with the why in place, let's talk about the how knowing that many schools are virtual this month at least or some hybrid version. We wanted to offer you some ideas from what we know teachers have done in the past, or what people are thinking of doing this year. So we know that some teachers have had students chalk messages of peace, and either at home or outside their school as a way to express issues or things that matter to them. Teachers have also asked their students to fold paper cranes you could teach your students the story of Sadako and the 1000 cranes and then have them make cranes and then you can gather them and actually send them to the Children's Peace Monument in Hiroshima. The photo here of that is from a teacher that we've worked with who did just that and received a photo in return of them hanging her classes peace cranes at the monument. You could create a physical or a virtual wall where students can write their hopes for peace. It's a place they could come if they can visit or you could create something online that they could contribute to. You can also make this a day of kindness. So have students write messages to students are kind messages to students maybe they don't know, or do small acts of kindness throughout the day wherever they are and whatever ways they can do. The photo I've included here is from last or from two years ago when students actually put stickers on lockers throughout the school. And what was really cool about that is those stickers actually ended up staying on the walkers throughout the year because they were so special. So you never really know where these small acts of kindness or messages of kindness will go. And there's certainly lots of virtual ways you can replicate that. You can also encourage your students to find some virtual volunteering opportunities. We're recommending checking out points of light this year. They have a great network of opportunities that that you can look into. And so that's something that that you might consider doing. You can have your students and we know student teachers who had their students make a personal commitment to be a peace builder so they can look for opportunities to resolve differences. They can listen with an open mind to those the different perspectives, or they could commit to seeking ways to help bridge divides and find common ground. So thinking about what does it mean to be a peace builder in their day to day life and making a commitment to do so. And in fact, on our the peace day challenge web page you can find a sign which is one of these images here that you can print out or your students could print or they could just hold up a blank piece of paper, and write down their commitment and share it on social media as as they're part of the challenge. We also have worked with teachers who've had their students do some research. So maybe this is an opportunity to look up historical or historic or historical or current peace builders in their community or in their world, and then present their research to their class, or to others to raise awareness about what being a peace builder means. If you're looking for a place to start us IP has a lot of great examples and in fact, the photo here of women building peace we have a new award that we're launching this year and in fact there's a great event on September 15, where finalists will be presented and the final award will be presented to one of these 10 women who are being honored for their work building peace in a number of countries around the world and actually can tune into this event it's going to be really cool. But there may be a great place to start to think about what is being a peace builder mean and have students do some research on them. But there are lots of other peace builders you can find on our website, or maybe they want to look closer to home and look at their community. You could also we have teachers who have organized assemblies or events. In the past it might be in person. This year could be virtual. So you could think about what would a virtual assembly look like what might maybe you could bring in a couple of virtual guest speakers and to talk about work that they're doing or issues that matter to them. So those are a few ideas that we know teachers have done in the past that have worked really well and translate really well to a virtual environment. They're meant to spark ideas. This is really open to anything you want to do to make a difference and build peace so it can it can be however you interpret it. There are lots of other ideas and resources for you, including a poster teaching guide on the peace day challenge web page, which you can find at that address. We also on our own web pages in public education have a lot of great resources, including a resource called the peace building toolkit for educators, which is a set of lesson plans. The first lessons and it's for middle and high school and then we've taken some of the middle school lessons and adapted them for upper elementary as well. And there are a couple lessons in there that provide introductions to conflict and peace. And we know some teachers in the past have used those lessons, perhaps to introduce the International Day of Peace, and to start conversations around what peace means to their students so we can offer you some guidance on how to have those conversations as well. And that's a place to start is with those lessons. So I think I, let's see. Alright, so then I wanted to just tell you a little bit about our peace teachers program and give you a few examples of what we know a couple of our peace teachers are doing this year. So if you don't know about our peace teachers program. It is a year long professional development opportunity for middle and high school teachers. In the United States. So we work with a small cohort of teachers to every year who work closely with us and with each other as they integrate resources around international conflict management peace building issues and skills into their classroom. So over the years we have teachers representing 20 states from across the country. And it's a real diversity of settings and schools and a core component of this program is actually taking the peace day challenge. And they get really creative every year. This year in particular our four peace teachers have gotten very creative and how to meet this virtual meet need. So one teacher from Mississippi is going to hold a virtual assembly for her upper school. She'll have student and guest speakers, including someone from us IP. And I'll tell you in a minute how you can request a guest speaker from us IP and at any point in the year. And they'll be talking about global issues that matter to them. One of our teachers from Kentucky actually inspired the idea on the previous slide about researching historic historical peace builders. It was an idea her students had for what to do for peace day this year. So they're going to be creating a video that tell these stories. And then they've also gone around and asked people in their own community and around the world what peace means to them and they'll compile those video clips into this video as well and end up with a really nice video that they can share in social media. One of our peace teachers in Nebraska is asking her students to contribute artistic messages of peace to a graffiti wall at her school. So she also hopes that they'll create a video commercial that they can share in their school news to promote the International Day of Peace. And then one of our peace teachers who's from Alaska is organizing a whole series of activities for her school's peace week because they actually are doing a whole week of activities. Including many lesson plans for advisory sessions drawing on the peace building toolkit for educators and some art projects that get students really thinking about peace. And then it's culminating in a declaration by her local government designating the 21st of September as her town's peace day. So there are some really great things happening this year. And I hope that you will you will be a part of it and that your school become a part of it. But whatever you do please make sure to share your action and tag it on social media using hashtag peace day challenge because that's how we know what people are doing around the world and it gets gathered up to be part of our peace day challenge mosaic An image that you share whether it's a social media post or a photo will be pulled into create a mosaic of all the inspiring things that we're doing together to create a more peaceful world. And on the 21st, you can visit the peace day challenge web page to see the final mosaic revealed. And you'll actually be able to search for your own image so you can pull up your school's action and activity from the mosaic of all of the activities taking place around the world which is pretty cool. And you'll get an email from you as I be thanking you for your contribution to the mosaic. So it's a nice way to hear from us and it might be something really nice for your students as well to see. Finally, beyond the peace day challenge, we are here as a resource for you and I hope you'll think of us that way. This is something that launches the year but we know there's a lot happening in September, especially this September. And so if you can't participate this year, do think of other ways we might support you or work with you throughout the year. We've compiled a list here actually of virtual resources for teachers and schools that hopefully will help you think about ways to work with us and you can find it on our website as well. I just wanted to go over a few of these so that you can get a sense of how we might work together over the year. So first please keep in mind that we are here on our experts are resourced to you so I mentioned just a little while ago about guest speakers. We would love to connect with you and we can offer you virtual educational programs, we can offer you guest speakers for your class for school assemblies, anything that might be useful for you. And there is a form on USIP's website where you can request that I'll have my email address at the end here you can always just send me an email as well, and I can help get you connected to. But our people are some of our best resources and we would love to get them talking to your students. We have additional resources on current events so we're a great place to go if you're asking your students to do research on current conflicts on peace building on international affairs. We have a great blog in particular that student friendly, we offer virtual at the moment events and then anything that's in person when we everything reopens again will also be webcast so you can tune into events or watching the recordings afterwards. And we have a lot of additional multimedia that are really great resources for students. We have on our section of course I mentioned we have a lot of great educator resources lesson plans activities simulations strategies for integrating all these these concepts into what you teach. It's great for social studies but it's also really great for English and language arts and for foreign language classrooms and for math classrooms and for school counselors and for anything, you can teach anything through a piece lens and that's something we can work with you on. And beyond that, we have a lot of online learning opportunities us a P provides free courses. So we have micro courses that are three hours long and they are always free, and they're great they provide an introduction to peace building and skills and peace building like negotiation and mediation. We also offer longer kind of more semester long courses that usually cost money, but we are making available for free through the end of this year. So that's a great opportunity for students but also for maybe you or your colleagues or anybody who wants to just expand their understanding of these concepts and these skills. And we also offer some additional professional development will be doing many more webinars this year for teachers so just stay tuned for more topics and dates coming up. And finally, you can come have a virtual visit at our headquarters you may not normally we offer in person visits if you're planning a field trip to DC. You could come visit us and we would do an educational program for you or your students. And since people can't do that at the moment we're offering virtual visits. So that's something you can request you can send me an email about it. And we would love to give you a virtual tour your students a virtual tour and tell you more about our work. There's also a really great tour a virtual tour you can take of the peace trail on the National Mall and this is a resource on USA piece website. It walks you through the war veterans and memorials and monuments along the National Mall and tells the peace stories of those locations. And since people can't visit them in person. We're offering our own version of a virtual tour. So if that's something of interest to you reach out to me and I'd love to get you connected and we can give you that tour you give your students that tour. So these are just some of the ways that we would love to work with you throughout the year, beyond the peace day challenge. So please remember to stay engaged with us. Look at our resources tune into webcasts or events and do sign up to receive our newsletter you might have already done so which is how you heard about this webinar but if you haven't. It's another way to stay on top of what we're offering and you want resources and opportunities. So I think I'm going to stop there and see if there are any additional questions, either about the peace day challenge or participating, or if you have any questions about us a P more broadly or resources. I'm happy to talk about anything on your mind at the moment. I'll pause and turn the floor over to you and feel free to type anything into the chat box or the q amp a. Depending what what you have. If I don't see anything that's fine. I'd also love to hear if people are planning to do something for the peace day challenge so if you weren't sure, or you were curious about ways to participate. If you have an idea or you think this sounds like something you'd like to do I'd love to hear about that as well. I'll just give everyone a second because I know it takes a minute to type but what is the most popular race people have participated. You know I think the most popular way is frankly the simplest. That's a great question, which is really just typing a commitment to being a peace builder on social media. And that is by far the easiest thing to do. And it's also a meaningful thing to do. So, it could be that sign. So you're taking a minute just to write down something that you commit to doing to build peace. A lot of what we see on social media is that we also see a lot around kindness so kind of different acts of kindness that people do. Some people get really into this and it's a great opportunity to do an event. It's hard this year, but in previous years and when people have a lot of have enough time to think about it. It can be a great way to, especially for schools we see a lot of kind of some it's a chance to have an assembly it's, and it can be around something else like it could be a launch of something else you're doing and then you connect it to the piece to the International Day of Peace to have that be your theme. And really tie it into a lot of different things that you're doing from the simplest to really the most complex. Catherine. Great. Oh, I'm so glad to hear that fantastic you'll be participating. The virtual wall of peace and notes of kindness. Great. I think there's some going to be some really creative approaches this year and I'm really excited to see what people come up with. Well, to me you see my email address here so if you want to do any brainstorming or you could use some assistance and being pointed in the direction of resources. I'm happy to do so. I encourage you to email me. So, unless there are any final questions or comments. I promised a short webinar and I want to hold hold myself to it. So I want to thank you all for coming. This is going to be posted as a recording. And so it here it will be there as a resource if you want to encourage anyone else to watch it will also be encouraging folks to watch it after the fact. But I would like to remind you to take the short survey that's going to appear at the end of this there will be link. So if you could just go to that that will help us. And thank you for everything you're doing for your students and for your communities this year, especially during these challenging times. We appreciate you as educators, and we look forward to working with each of you in the future. And I want to wish you a happy International Day of Peace in advance. So thank you all for joining and hopefully we'll see you again in the future. Thank you all.