Teachers
Peace Child provides tried-and-tested, teacher-driven materials to fill gaps in traditional curricula which students quickly recognise is vital to their own, and their planet’s, future.
Chief amongst their personal concerns is “Getting a Job!” Youth
at our World Youth Congresses mandated Peace Child to focus on Youth Employment
and to go beyond traditional careers advice to provide students and teachers with individualised, student-centred whole life-planning. Our main programme in this area in recent years has been the Work the Change programme: offered as either a peer-delivered, or teacher-delivered programme, this helps students think about their school-to-work transition years before they actually have to make that transition. Our earlier programmes, Be the Change and Create the Change – explore life skills and behaviour patterns that affect not just the students’ own lives, but also their contribution to the future health of the planet.
This is why Peace Child has been deeply involved in the development of the United Nations Declaration on Future Generations, passed in September 2024. This has spawned a variety of global programmes including the UN Foundation’s Unlock the Future Coalition of which the Peace Child Time Travel Chat Show is a key part. Confronting the fact that the world lacks the global infrastructure to protect our Planet’s life support systems, requires students to explore their generational challenge to install those protection mechanisms to ensure that, while meeting our own needs, we ensure that future generations have the capacity to meet their needs as well. Students need very little reminding that their parents generation have not done a great job at this.
So doing a version of the UN Centenary Peace Child musical will open up the minds of your students and their whole community by exploring these existential questions. So – if you are a drama or music teacher, think about doing either the full dress musical or the choral platform performance. Or, if music / drama is not your thing, think about doing a Model Citizens’ Assembly, a Youth Sustainability Action Forum or an Inter-generational Conversation Café – any of which can create a memorable, youth-led community event at your school. Peace Child’s Books and Background materials will also give you ideas that students can work into their shows or presentations.
For, at base, Peace Child is about harnessing students creativity to change their world: to do that, they need creative teachers who will make the time to address their concerns.