For the past five years Humane Education Advocates Reaching Teachers (HEART) has worked to further its mission to foster compassion and respect for all living beings and the environment by educating youth and teachers in humane education.
HEART is a youth development organization that teaches kids about human rights, animal protection and environmental ethics. Thousands of students have gone through the HEART program to learn how to think critically about issues like child labor, bullying, dog fighting, factory farming, pollution, climate change and more. Once the kids understand the issues, they discover how they can take action to make a difference in the world.
In addition to providing direct services to students, we also offer teacher training workshops to give other educators the skills to bring important world issues into the classroom.
There is a growing movement among educators and administrators to include character and humane education in their school curricula as a way to teach students respect, responsibility, and empathy, and to help them develop critical thinking and decision-making skills based on compassion, tolerance and integrity. HEART believes that a student’s educational experience should not be limited to traditional teachings, but must also include enrichment instruction to motivate active learning and critical thinking. Children deserve to be provided with comprehensive instruction that will make them not only better students, but also better members of society. Character and humane education programs can contribute to improving student attitudes, behavior, attendance and academic achievement.
In this blog, we’ll share with you ideas for classroom projects, teacher resources, book recommendations, HEART events and all things related to humane education. If there are any topics you’re especially interested in learning about, or questions you have for a humane education organization, please feel free to leave a comment.
Check out this video to see a bit of what we do inside the classroom.