Coverdell World Wise Schools
How do you plan to infuse global issues and
21st century skills into your classroom?
Coverdell World Wise Schools resources make it easy to integrate global issues and cultural awareness into the core content areas. Hear educator perspectives on the value of bringing global education into the classroom. (8 min, 2010)
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Enrich K–12 students with the dynamic cross-cultural classroom materials, literature, videos, lessons, ideas, and services provided free by the World Wise Schools program. Download brochure
Program Overview
If you are a teacher, you have a treasure trove of resources available to you through the Coverdell World Wise Schools program of the Peace Corps. There's the Correspondence Match program that puts you and your class in touch with a currently serving Peace Corps Volunteer. There are innumerable lessons about cultures and countries worldwide. You'll find free cross-cultural publications, award-winning videos, stories, folk tales, classroom speakers, and more. The program is designed to broaden perspectives in culture and geography and to encourage service.
Since its inception in 1989 by then Peace Corps Director Paul D. Coverdell, World Wise Schools has helped more than 3 million U.S. students communicate directly with Peace Corps Volunteers all over the world. Initially set up as a correspondence match program between Volunteers and U.S. classes, World Wise Schools expanded its scope over almost two decades by providing a broad range of resources for educators.
Educators use these materials to teach subjects as varied as language arts, social studies, geography, environmental education, and international economics. Many teachers find that by increasing awareness of cultural diversity through World Wise Schools resources, students come to better value the rich heritage and broad representation of peoples within their own communities.
Peace Corps Volunteers in the field exchange emails, letters, videos and tapes, photographs, and telephone calls with classrooms in every state and the District of Columbia. The Correspondence Match program matches up Peace Corps Volunteers in the field with U.S. classroom teachers. The result? A vibrant two-year exchange of ideas, stories, pictures, and artifacts that helps U.S. students in the classroom learn about the people, geography, and cultures of the world from the direct experience of Volunteers living in other countries.
If you're looking for lessons, activities, and readings to help students learn about geography and culture as well as to become more culturally aware and socially tolerant, look no farther than our publications. All are free and online. Some are available in bound form from World Wise Schools.
Search by region, country, subject, or grade level: You'll find ready-made lessons ranging from cultural issues to practical challenges of obtaining water, from studying folk tales to understanding the norms of other peoples. All are standards-based and free.
The voice of the Peace Corps Volunteer—from posts isolated and urban, frigid and tropical, Western and Eastern—written from the field or after their return. Visit other cultures through letters, stories, folk tales, and poems written by the Volunteers who have lived for two years among the peoples and cultures featured.
Are you a teacher who would like to have a returned Peace Corps Volunteers speak to your class? Or a returned Volunteer looking for a ready audience? The Speakers Match program connects U.S. classrooms and other audiences with former Peace Corps Volunteers.
Enhance lessons with resources that promote awareness of critical global issues and cross-cultural intelligence.
Let the world come alive through Peace Corps-inspired podcasts, videos, and slide shows.
State Department of Education Partnerships
To enrich educational curricula, Coverdell World Wise Schools collaborate with curriculum developers to infuse a variety of free cross-cultural educational materials and resources, as well as a global perspective, into the classrooms.Delaware
New Jersey
Awards
2011: Peace Corps Challenge Online game - American Library Association's Great Web Sites for Kids
2008: Peace Corps Challenge Online game - W3 Silver Award
2007: World Wise Schools Website - Webby Official Honoree
1995: Destination: Lesotho Video - Telly Awards Winner
1995: Destination: Cameroon Video - Telly Awards Finalist
1993: Destination: Cameroon Video - NAGC Gold Screen Winner
1993: Destination: Honduras Video - NAGC Gold Screen Honorable Mention
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