Promoting Humane Education and Policy to Colleagues and Administrators

Be an educator of educators. Don't make your humane education efforts exclusive to your classroom. Reach out to other educators and administrators so that they will join and support your work.

• Most school districts mandate character education programs as a result of increasing school violence. Remind administrators that no character education program is complete without lessons of kindness to animals. Almost every school shooter in recent history practiced his or her violence on animals before moving on to human victims. (See HelpingAnimals.com for more information.)

• Teach humane education in your classroom. Use TeachKind's online lessons and activity sheets and other free educational materials to help you do this.

• Order copies of TeachKind's humane education brochure to give to teachers, administrators, and parents. This leaflet explains the hows and whys of humane education. Here are some distribution ideas. You can view the brochure here.

• Encourage your school board and administrators to implement humane and healthy policies. These policies could include banning dissection or-at a minimum-having a student-choice policy; increasing fruit and vegetable availability and consumption in vending machines and school lunches; using nonlethal, preventative, and trap-and-release pest-control methods; and more. Please read the policy section of our Web site to find out more.