Let's Be Changemakers: Classroom Resources

The D School at Stanford University has designed these toolkits with a strong focus on Systems Thinking and Social Innovation.

In this online intro to design, you’ll get exposed to a medley of design abilities, methods, and mindsets. You’ll watch videos and learn what design looks like in the real world, as well as discover ‘what design is’ by doing partner activities and discussions. In three hours you’ll learn over 20 concepts and tools that will help you apply human-centered design to your own work.

The Campus Starter Kit is designed to help higher education leaders build hubs of social innovation by tapping into the creativity and ingenuity of the campus community.

From tips to gaining legislative support to advocacy project examples to spark inspiration, the Advocacy Toolkit, is sure to support your local community in making a big impact to STEM Learning and career pathways.

This toolkit is powered by the expertise and experiences of Start Empathy’s network of Ashoka Changemaker Schools -- over 200 schools around the world who are practicing“changemaker education” in their curricula and culture by distinctively cultivating empathy, leadership, creative problem solving, and teamwork in their students. The activities in this toolkit will help teachers 1) Build the Foundation for empathy and kindness in and out of the classroom, and 2) Activate Empathy and Kindness with specific activities that can be done in class and at home.

The Co-Designing Schools Toolkit helps build the capacity of school communities to set and pursue equity aspirations, so that every student is future-ready, no matter who they are, where they live, or how they learn.

The TED-Ed Student Talks Program supports students as they discover, explore and present their big ideas in the form of short, TED-style talks. Only educators at schools or educational organizations can submit an application. When an educator is approved, they receive access to a guidebook with activity instructions and idea journals for students.

Browse hundreds of TED-Ed Animations and TED Talks - designed to spark the curiosity of learners. There are thousands of other video-based lessons organized by the subject.

A World Café is an easy-to-use method for creating a living network of collaborative dialogue around questions that matter in service to real work. Cafés in different contexts have been named in many ways to meet specific goals, for example Creative Cafés, Strategy Cafés, Leadership Cafés, and Community Cafés. World Café conversations are based on the principles and format developed by the World Café, a global movement to support conversations that matter in corporate, government, and community settings around the world.

A free multimedia platform for educators and students. Through immersive storytelling and curricula, explore the deeper issues facing humanity.

This classroom activity is designed to promote student understanding of multiple social identities, intersectionality theory and the complexity of group membership and identities, and the matrix of oppression; to provide experiential student learning opportunities for direct and applied social action with regard to intersecting identities; to develop students’ prosocial behavior and strengthen their public education skills for building community awareness of social inequalities.

This tool from the D School at Stanford University offers questions to root you in the ongoing work of living a social justice-oriented lifestyle. Engage with these at random, sporadically or as you see fit.

Assignment Mindmapping is a creativity tool that allows individuals to draw out multiple ideas/words/thoughts in a visual manner that generates more ideas. In order to identify a social need, we will walk through a mindmapping activity that encourages individuals to think out of the box and visualize multiple solutions.

The activity invites participants to articulate the paradoxical challenges that a group must confront to succeed. Wicked Questions engage everyone in sharper strategic thinking by revealing entangled challenges and possibilities that are not immediately obvious.

These cards were developed by teaching team members, students, as well as designers from around the world. Within the tools you’ll find tangible examples that take you to action. Anyone that is interested in design thinking can use it for inspiration when you get stuck or to generate new ideas for potential ways of doing things.

Expose your students to the vast and complex world of social change through solutions journalism. Each story in the Solutions Story Tracker was published by a reputable news outlet; investigates a response to a social problem in depth; surfaces insights others can use; explores challenges and obstacles; and reports on impact. Participants can copy and customize a SJN teaching collection or create their own using this step-by-step guide and ask students to find, analyze and share a solutions journalism story as part of an assignment.

In this activity, participants can take the Changemaker Personality Quiz to see how they show up in the world and what role they can play in the Story of Stuff Community and beyond.