Welcome to the Teaching Human Rights Database for College Instructors!

Our database offers college teachers the opportunity to add topics and lessons to their classes that come from a range of disciplines, enhancing interdisciplinarity and a broader understanding of human rights.

Under "teaching activities" you find an alphabetical list of all activities.

Guidelines for contributors are available under "contributors." You can directly send in your teaching activity for review under "teaching activities" - "contribute your teaching activity" by filling out the form.

Browse "syllabi" from a range of disciplines with human rights focus, and suggestions for creating your own "introduction to human rights" course. You can search the syllabi by category and keywords.

This website is a continual work in progress. We welcome feedback, comments and contributions of lesson plans.

On The Blog

Simulating in the classroom (Part II)

This is a followup post to “Simulating in the classroom (Part I)” which can be accessed here. A second simulation, called Ba Fa’ Ba Fa’ I have found to be particularly effective. This one was also created by Gary Shirts and has been used by the Peace Corps for decades to teach new corps members the dangers of seeing the […]

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Simulating in the Classroom (Part I)

Educational studies show that the human mind needs a change of pace after 10-20 minutes of lecture when academic attention/performance starts to wane (see Burke and Ray 2008). This makes for a challenge in the college classroom where teachers are often required to fill 50-minute, 75-minute, or 150-minute time slots. Traditional approaches to breaking up a lecture typically include group work, […]

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Protecting the Privacy of Undocumented Students

In the spring of 2017, I taught a course on the education rights of undocumented students (I discussed it a bit in a past post). As might be expected with such a topic, there were multiple undocumented students enrolled in the course as well as others with an interest in the issue. Throughout the semester, […]

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