About Coverdell World Wise Schools
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.
Correspondence Match
Some 4,000 Peace Corps Volunteers in the field exchange e-mails, letters, videos and tapes, photographs, and telephone calls with classrooms in every state and the District of Columbia. Why not take part!
Publications
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. Read on.
Lesson Plans
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. Read on.
Stories
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. Read on.
Speakers Match
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? Check out Speakers Match, a service of World Wise Schools that connects U.S. classrooms and other audiences with former Peace Corps Volunteers.