About the Lesson Plans

Developed in conjunction with EdOnline, Thirteen/WNET’s educational division, RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY’s lesson plans introduce students to today’s most important religious and moral issues. Using selected stories, online video, and other resources from the R&E Web site, these lessons address a broad range of current events from bioethics and the role of faith in politics to Islam and terrorism.

Each RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY lesson plan is oriented toward a specific grade level. Individual lesson plans are broken down into three sections: background and standards information for teachers; lesson procedures, including suggested activities and resources; and “organizers” for students which provide handouts and other study aids. Each lesson plan also contains supplemental materials and strategies to help students conduct futher research and to stimulate classroom discussion.

Your Master Teacher: David Streight

David Streight is executive director of the Council for Spiritual and Ethical Education, a national organization that provides resources and educational opportunities to elementary, middle, and secondary schools for the moral and spiritual development of children and for high-quality instruction about the world’s religious traditions. He has also served as co-director of Religious Studies in Secondary Schools, a coalition of teachers in public, private, and Catholic schools working to upgrade the quality of teaching about religions. A nationally certified school psychologist who spent three decades teaching in public, Catholic, and private independent schools, he has also translated a half-dozen books, primarily on Islam, for academic presses. In 1990 the National Endowment for the Humanities named him one of 50 “teacher-scholars” in the United States. Contact David Streight.