Grades 9–12
Find a wealth of lessons and activities based on Peace Corps stories that will help students understand peoples and cultures the world over.
- A Fundamental of Culture—Cultural Context
- Students will examine how the unwritten rules of culture depend upon the context in which an event or behavior takes place.
- A Morning of Weighing Babies
- Students will explore literary characters and their relationships to an author and to each other.
- A Single Lucid Moment Lesson
- Students will wrestle with resolving contrasting values between cultures.
- A South African Storm
- The writer confronts issues of racial prejudice that she encounters in South Africa, years after the abolition there of the official policy of apartheid.
- A Togolese Tale: The Big Fire
- Students will examine the universal nature of folk tales and evaluate the meaning of a tale told in Togo.
- A Year
- Students will closely examine an author's philosophical look at life through superficially mundane, but ultimately meaningful, anecdotes he describes as a teacher in Uzbekistan.
- Americans
- Students will examine what it means to be "American" in the eyes of people from other cultures.
- Beauty
- Students will practice evaluating things of importance or beauty from different perspectives.
- Becoming Part of the Community
- Students will examine how individual Peace Corps Volunteers succeeded in adapting to their new cultural environments.
- Beyond Demographics
- Students will learn more about the Dominican Republic through watching and discussing a video about the country and its people.
- Breaching the Gulf Between Cultures
- Students delve further into the dynamics, the challenges, and the rewards of adjusting to a new culture, as illustrated by the author's account of his father's coming to terms with Sri Lankan customs.
- Brief Encounters (Building Bridges)
- Through a simulation game, students will experience what it is like to confront and deal with a culture highly different from their own.
- Brief Encounters (Looking at Ourselves and Others)
- Through a simulation game, students will experience what it is like to confront and deal with a culture highly different from their own.
- Capturing the Reader With Vivid Images
- Students will examine how the author tries to capture the reader's imagination immediately, through imagery--and hold on to it.
- Coming to Terms With Cultural Differences
- Students will discover that it is possible to be challenged and "culture-shocked" by the norms of one's own culture when returning home from having been away and living in another culture. They will also examine and compare the customs of modern marriages with the customes of traditional, arranged marriages.
- Conducting Interviews in the Community
- Students will conduct individual interviews to find out in depth how people in their own communities provide services to others.
- Confronting Two Challenges—One Physical, One Intellectual
- Students will examine how the author confronted the challenges of a new language and a new culture.
- Cross-Cultural Dialogue Lesson
- Students will strive to view situations from more than their own point of view.
- Culture Is Like an Iceberg
- Students will examine features of culture to determine which are visible and which are invisible, and how the invisible affect the visible.
- Day-to-Day Life in a Small African Village
- Students will learn about and experience just a bit of what it's like living in a village in Tanzania—from language to geography to health and hygiene issues.
- Defining Culture
- Students will define culture and examine how it affects them.
- Discovering New Perspectives on Life
- Students examine how the author's worldview expanded by living in another culture.
- Discussion Questions for Amber Bechtel’s Essay on AIDS in South Africa
- How can traditional healers help alleviate South Africa’s HIV/AIDS crisis? Peace Corps Volunteer Amber Bechtel takes a look at traditional medicine’s role alongside new treatments for HIV/AIDS.
- Do You Really Know What Wealth Is?
- Students will examine what it means to have wealth—a concept that turns out to be philosophical as well as economic—and examine the importance of music.
- Encountering Very Different Ways of Life
- In a captivating and amusing account, the author shows just how challenging it is for someone to move from a familiar to an unfamiliar culture and then deal with adjusting to the new environment.
- Everyone Has a Culture—Everyone Is Different
- Students will distinguish between what constitutes culture and what makes up personal individuality.
- Examining What Sharing Really Means
- Students examine the remarkable degree of sharing that the author encounters upon arrival in Africa.
- Fate vs. Mind: A Macedonian Folk Tale
- Students will find and appreciate that folk tales, a stylized genre of literature, tell more than stories; they convey morals or lessons. Looking into various aspects of this folk tale, students will also weigh the strengths of fate and consciousness, Folk tales can also be told in a stylized manner, as this one is.
- Features of Culture
- Students will enumerate features of their own culture and evaluate how those features have influenced their lives.
- Generalizations: How Accurate Are They?
- Students will examine how generalizations can be hurtful and unfair, and they will devise ways to qualify statements so they avoid stereotyping other people.
- Geography, Climate, and Community in the Dominican Republic
- Students will begin to familiarize themselves with the geography and culture of the Dominican Republic.
- Half Man, Half Limping Rabbit
- A simple folk tale on the surface, the story told by Nina Porzucki holds deeper meaning that students can probe, ultimately examining the possible advantages of mortality over immortality.
- How Cultures Differ—Two Different Perspectives on the Same Event
- Students will examine the author's running race from two different cultural perspectives to see just how different the effects of culture can be.
- How a Writer Conveys Descriptions With a Wallop
- Students will identify strategies the author used to vividly convey qualitative and quantitative aspects of life in China, then use those strategies in writing of their own.
- I Had a Hero Lesson
- Students examine what it takes to make a hero.
- Identifying and Using Parallelism and Balance in Literature
- Students will examine the story for use of balanced sentences and parallelism—two literary devices—and then practice using those devices in writing of their own.
- Ilunga's Harvest Lesson
- Students examine the culturally based impulse to share with others versus the impulse to watch out for oneself or one's immediate family.
- Interpreting Behavior: Expanding Our Point of View
- Students will be led to grasp the importance of understanding behavior from the perspective of the culture in which that behavior is the norm.
- Introducing Culture
- Students will begin to analyze what it is that constitutes culture.
- Ivan the Fool Lesson 1
- Students will read a classic folk tale for comprehension and enjoyment.
- Ivan the Fool Lesson 2
- Students will learn that different cultures respect or fear certain numbers, numbers that can appear in folklore in several ways.
- Ivan the Fool Lesson 3
- Students will learn that a quest is central to many folk stories, and they will write their own, incorporating a quest.
- Just an Ordinary Day
- Students will weigh the old with the modern in contemporary Romania and examine how culture changes with the introduction of new elements.
- Life in a Hurricane Zone
- Students will learn about the nature of hurricanes and examine in detail the effect of Hurricane Georges upon the Dominican Republic.
- Living by the Book
- Reading for pleasure or cultural sensitivity? Guide your students through the cultural complexities of life on a Fijian island.
- Looking Back
- Students will weigh the advantages and disadvantages of a state-controlled social system and look into the strains that occur in the transition of a state-controlled system to a democracy, such as that occurring in Macedonia.
- 'Magic' Pablo Lesson
- Students examine what goes into hero worship and establishing unlikely friendships.
- Modeling Our Writing After Another Author's Style
- Students will emulate the author's descriptive phrases in their own writing.
- Narrative Cartoons
- Based on essays and photos provided by Peace Corps Volunteers, students will create a narrative cartoon, a set of sequentially placed images that tell a story.
- Nomadic Life Lesson
- Students will examine the imagery in a rich, spare poem about an interlude between two women of different cultures in rural Niger.
- On Being Seen as Different
- Students will discover that while other cultures may seem strange or odd in some ways, their own culture can seem similarly strange or odd to those in other cultures.
- On Sunday There Might Be Americans Lesson
- Students will gain insight into the mindset of a rural boy in Niger, specifically regarding his relations with both indigenous and foreign people in the local market.
- Out With the Old, In With the New
- Students learn about China's cultural and economic complexities through a slide show that is written, read, and photographed by a Peace Corps Volunteer.
- Perspectives on Paraguay
- Students examine cultural differences between Paraguay and the United States.
- Picture Perfect
- Students will use literature to explore cultural norms in another country and compare them with their own experiences.
- Planning a Service Project
- Students will implement what they have learned about serving communities by planning and undertaking a community service project.
- Press Conference on Hurricane Georges
- To reinforce oral communication skills, organize a "press conference" on Hurricane Georges.
- Protecting Philippine Reefs
- As fish populations plummet, a Peace Corps Volunteer works with Filipinos to restore the sea life that the local people depend on for food. Watch slide show
- Recognizing How Another Culture Differs From One's Own
- Students will discover how the concepts of time and punctuality can differ markedly in the United States and another country.
- Reduce, Re-use, Recycle
- The importance of recycling to reduce waste, to employ trash in useful ways, and to save the environment all feature in students' review of this letter from Romania.
- Resolving a Cross-Cultural Misunderstanding
- Students will try to resolve a cross-cultural misunderstanding in a constructive manner.
- Searching for Meanings Beneath the Surface of the Poem
- Students will examine the poem and compare perspectives of the author and the subjects of his poem.
- Seeing Both Sides of an Issue
- Each student will develop arguments on both sides of an issue to see how it feels to understand opposing views.
- Seeing Things From the Someone Else's Point of View
- Students will examine the cultural trait of sharing, trying to view it from the point of view of someone in another culture.
- Seeing the World in New Ways
- Students will probe their own histories to record how they have had to expand their worldviews.
- Service Projects in the Dominican Republic
- Students will look into how Peace Corps Volunteers have provided community assistance in the Dominican Republic.
- Sleuthing a Writer's Skills
- Students will closely examine the author's lively text to determine how she achieved her many literary effects.
- Starting Off the Day (and School Year) in Ukraine
- Students will compare the first day of school in Ukraine with the first day of school in the United States, including the challenges students and teachers both face in each country.
- The Death of Old Woman Kelema
- Students will investigate methods for using imagery in literature to convey the sights and sounds of another culture. Students will compare elements of another culture to their own.
- The Extra Place Lesson
- Students take up the challenge of deciding what to do when confronted by a difficult and awkward situation.
- The Iceberg
- Students will identify features that all cultures share and decide which are visible and which are invisible.
- The Importance of Being Flexible and Open-minded as a Visitor to Another Culture
- Students will identify the advantages of being flexible when visiting or living in a culture different from one's own.
- The Importance of Speaking Another Language
- Students will evaluate how important it can be to speak a language other than their own.
- The Rigors of Learning a New Language
- Students will consider the immensity of the the task the author undertook to learn Chinese.
- The Talking Goat Lesson
- Students will analyze the meanings and patterns of a folk tale.
- The True Cost of Coffee
- Students will examine the economic, health, and environmental risks of a one-crop economy in the developing world.
- Tsunami! Examining Earth’s Most Destructive Waves
- Students will investigate just what a tsunami is, what causes it, how fast it travels, what it looks like, and its devastating effects upon landfall.
- Two Very Different Concepts of Time
- Students will delve further into the differences between a time-bound culture and a culture in which time seems almost unimportant.
- Under the Tongan Sun
- Enjoy a day in the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer living in Tonga.
- Understanding and Avoiding HIV/AIDS
- Students will investigate what HIV/AIDS is, how it is caused, the effects of the disease, and how to prevent it. ("HIV" stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus. "AIDS" stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.)
- Using Effective, Amusing Writing As a Model
- Students will use the author's writing as a model to achieve vivid description and engaging humor in compositions of their own.
- Using Effective, Evocative Writing as a Model
- Students will analzye the author's style to learn techniques for strengthening their own writing.
- Using a Mentor Text to Develop a New Style of Writing
- Students will examine some of the author's writing traits and then make an effort to incorporate his style into their own writing.
- Using an Author's Clever Strategies in One's Own Writing
- Students will examine specific clever strategies of the author and incorporate them in their own writings.
- Waking Up, Stepping Out
- Students will focus on a rich and colorful description of a culture unfamiliar to most of them, and then compare the similarities and differences they find between Nepali culture and their own.
- Water in Africa
- Water in Africa reflects the deep connection of water to all aspects of life in African countries, a concept Coverdell World Wise Schools has captured in the learning units featured on this site. Ninety Peace Corps Volunteers contributed firsthand accounts and photographs to the lessons and activities you will find.
- What Is Good Use of Time?
- Students delve into questions about how best to use one's time—in one culture or another.
- What Sharing Really Means
- Students will examine closely the meaning of generosity and how sharing can be a cultural trait.
- What's Integrity?
- What constitutes a "good" job? And what defines integrity? Students will explore both questions in relation to Steve Iams's writings about the subjects.
- Where Life Is Too Short
- Students will come away from this lesson beginning to understand the impact and implications of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in South Africa and beyond.
- Where There's Smoke
- Students examine how people can effectively bring about positive change in another culture, focusing on the introduction of ventilated stoves in Nepali homes.
- Where in the World Is the Dominican Republic?
- Students will examine the effect of one's environment upon how one lives, and they will begin to investigate the geography of the Dominican Republic.
- Who Works for the Common Good in Our Community?
- Students will learn why and in what ways service organizations privide assistance to communities.
- Why Does Service Matter?
- Students will sum up what they have found about why and how other people serve their communities and why service matters.
- Window Into Another Culture
- Students will examine a real-life confrontation of cultural values through the experience of a Peace Corps Volunteer in Papua New Guinea.
- Working for the Common Good
- Students will examine the concept of the common good and evaluate how it applies to providing assistance in a developing country.