In the past couple of months, teachers and other education professionals have had to adopt alternative methods of teaching for the safety and well-being of them and their students. In an effort to support educators during this transitional time, we at TeachKind have adapted our methods of promoting compassion for animals to suit the needs of a virtual classroom. We’ve created a series of videos to provide educators and parents with empathy-promoting lessons, including compassionate stories read aloud by TeachKind staffers who have prior classroom experience, a presentation from Ellie the elephant, and a demonstration involving the future of frog dissection. We anticipate creating more virtual lessons in the coming months.
TEACHKIND’S READ-ALOUDS AND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Share the videos below with your students and use the corresponding lessons afterward.
Buddy Unchained
Use this lesson to teach students that animals like Buddy are not things.
Hey, Little Ant
Use this lesson to promote kindness to all animals, big or small.
How to Heal a Broken Wing
Use this lesson to inspire students to speak up for animals in need.
Our Farm
Use this lesson to help students understand that sheep are individuals and why it’s cruel to buy and wear wool.
THE FUTURE OF HUMANE EDUCATION
Meet Ellie, an animatronic elephant who teaches students the importance of having empathy for everyone and standing up to bullies:
Use this lesson for students in grades K–2 to discuss the importance of choosing inclusive language when talking about animals. Use this lesson for students in grades 3–5 to discuss the importance of considering not just animals’ basic needs but also their unique desires.
Check out SynFrog and see how this synthetic frog can help real animals and students alike:
Need more inspiration to incorporate humane education into your curriculum? Sign up for TeachKind E-News here!
All fields in bold are mandatory.
FormBuilder Form – 3364
By submitting this form, you are agreeing to our collection, storage, use, and disclosure of your personal info in accordance with our privacy policy as well as to receiving e-mails from us.
With a heat advisory in effect for the Fresno, Modesto, and Sacramento areas, animals—who can quickly succumb to heatstroke if left outdoors—are at risk. In the past two years, there have been at least 114 hot weather–related animal deaths—and these are just the ones that have been reported. Most aren’t.
Anyone who leaves animals outside to suffer in severe weather may be prosecuted for cruelty.
The following tips will help keep animal companions safe in hot weather:
Keep animals indoors. Unlike humans, dogs can sweat only through their footpads and cool themselves by panting, so even brief sun exposure can have life-threatening consequences. Anyone who sees animals in distress and is unable to help should note their locations and alert authorities immediately.
Never leave an animal inside a hot vehicle. Temperatures can quickly soar in parked cars, and a dog trapped inside can die from heatstroke within minutes—even if the car is in the shade with the windows slightly open, which has little to no effect on lowering the temperature inside the car. PETA offers an emergency window-breaking hammer for help with intervening in life-or-death situations.
Avoid hot pavement. When outdoor temperatures reach the 80s, asphalt temperatures can climb to 140 degrees, causing pain, burns, and permanent damage to dogs’ paws after just a few minutes of contact. Walk dogs on grass whenever possible, and avoid walking in the middle of the day. Never run with dogs in hot weather—they’ll collapse before giving up, at which point, it may be too late to save them.
Fellow animal liberators, I come to you right now—as an exhausted Black man—asking for help working against systemic racism that threatens Black lives. I know personally how motivated you all are, as I am, in pushing for real change. We need to show that energy right now.
Delsol Productions
Those of us who are active in the animal rights movement have a reason for being powerful allies. If we truly believe in empathy and compassion for all living beings, we can show it today.
Those involved in the animal rights movement know all too well how frustrating it is for people to scoff at our message, even when we’re armed with evidence of blatant injustice.
Recognize our aggravation as Black people when the powers that be try to avoid or twist the narrative around the killing of Black people by racists. Just as we know it’s indefensible to use and abuse animals, the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery and the near countless other Black lives taken because of violent bigotry are completely unjustifiable.
Delsol ProductionsMemorial for George Floyd, Minneapolis.
This is especially true when these atrocities are recorded for all the world to see. Both the animal rights movement and the Black Lives Matter movement include activists who know that horrible violence takes place off camera daily. But when people view the footage for themselves, they can no longer declare ignorance, only apathy. That’s why we must stand—and march—together.
We know the unfair justice system well. The deck is stacked against anyone working to end oppression.
Both movements also realize that even recorded evidence often isn’t enough to secure a conviction in the U.S. The demonstrations taking place right now are bigger than the four officers who murdered George Floyd on camera. Racists, whether or not they wear a badge, often go unpunished for killing Black Americans.
How many times have we seen obvious cruelty go unpunished in the animal rights movement? Let’s remember that hurt—that grief over the failure of the judicial system—and use it to relate to the events of the Black Lives Matter movement.
There are Black police officers, and there are good police officers of all colors. But people are now marching globally against acts of barbarism that are systemic in many police departments.
The marchers today are demanding the same thing that animal rights activists are demanding: accountability.
The Black Lives Matter movement calls for “an end to the systemic racism that allows this culture of corruption to go unchecked and our lives to be taken.”
This call for an end to unjust oppression is a message that should resonate with every single person pushing for animal rights. Numerous folks at PETA and other animal rights activists know what it’s like to be arrested and detained simply for demonstrating against injustice. All the while, vile perpetrators get off scot-free.
Delsol Productions
Both of our movements want sweeping, reformative legislation that would help lead to convictions. We all want more transparency in investigations. We want prosecutors and attorney generals who will go to bat for us when we expose cruelty.
Animal rights activists want justice always, so they can understand the importance of defunding militarized police forces that kill Black people. PETA is on the front lines pushing for the defunding of federal and state institutions that funnel money into cruel experiments on animals and that use and often kill animals for entertainment. We know these institutions speak one language fluently, and that’s the language of money.
At the end of the day, we all want to see more funds channeled into positive projects: hospitals, schools, and social programs that help build our communities.
Please, resist detracting from the thrust of these demonstrations with an “all lives matter” perspective.
The idea comes from a compassionate heart—and the idea is true—but this phrase has been weaponized to delegitimize the Black Lives Matter movement.
As an animal rights supporter, you know how frustrating it is when someone says, “How can you care about animals when children are going hungry?” It is not either/or. But when you’re demonstrating against acts like scalding pigs to death in boiling water inside slaughterhouses or running dogs to death in the Iditarod, you’re talking about very specific lives. That focus needs to be maintained.
Delsol Productions
Right now, Black activists like me are asking people of all colors to listen to our demands and our needs.
Please hear us. Just as PETA wants the world to pay attention to the plight of animals suffering in laboratories, on farms, and in roadside zoos and to educate themselves on the plight of animals under human supremacy, the Black Lives Matter movement wants people to learn as much as they can about systemic racism.
This isn’t the time for “whataboutism.” This is a time to stand with our brothers and sisters against the same cruel system that wouldn’t think twice about throwing you facedown in the dirt at your own protest.
Fellow animal liberators, we know the power of protesting and demonstrating. Use it now.
I only ask that my fellow animal rights activists make their voices heard and show solidarity with Black people now, for this is the moment to do so. Everyone has a moral responsibly to stand against hate and unequivocal violence, no matter who the victims may be. Your voice could very well save my life.
Please see the following statement from PETA neuroscientist Emily Trunnell regarding a paper published today in Nature Neuroscience titled “A Circadian Rhythm-Gated Subcortical Pathway for Nighttime-Light-Induced Depressive-Like Behaviors in Mice”:
These poorly conceived experiments, in which researchers stuck needles into mice’s eyeballs and conducted invasive brain surgeries on them, not only are cruel but also tell us absolutely nothing about the effects of nighttime light on humans. Some animals were purposely bred to be blind, or their vision was otherwise manipulated. The animals’ “depressive-like behaviour” was assessed using the highly unreliable forced swim test, in which mice are dropped into inescapable tanks of water and made to swim to keep from drowning, and tail suspension tests, in which the animals are taped up by their sensitive tails and left to dangle, struggling to right themselves. Most puzzling was the experimenters’ decision to use mice, who are nocturnal animals, and to expose them to “nighttime light” during the beginning of their wake cycle. This is like calling sunshine “nighttime light” for humans. Non-invasive studies with human volunteers would have been both humane and relevant. Why this experiment received funding and its results were published should be thoroughly investigated.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.
To piggyback on its billboard now up on I-95 that proclaims, “Tofu Never Caused a Pandemic,” PETA is teaming up with local restaurant Veganized to send 100 delicious, tofu-based lunches to workers at the nearby Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital on Tuesday. The all-vegan delivery will include the Samurai wrap (smoked tofu, roasted sweet potato, and veggies with a miso spread) and The Angelica sandwich (smoked tofu and veggies topped with cashew cheese and lemon pesto) plus chocolatey brownies made with silken tofu and drizzled with raspberry sauce.
“Healthcare workers at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital—and around the world—deserve delicious, immune-boosting vegan fare,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA hopes this lunchtime delivery will brighten their day and remind people that tofu, unlike meat from abused animals, never caused a pandemic.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that approximately 75% of recently emerged infectious diseases affecting humans originated in other animals. The novel coronavirus originated in a “wet market” in China where live and dead animals were sold for food. Influenza viruses have originated in pigs and chickens—but never in versatile vegan foods like tofu.
In addition to helping prevent future pandemics, each person who goes vegan saves the lives of nearly 200 animals every year and significantly reduces their own risk of suffering from health problems, including strokes, obesity, cancer, and heart disease.
PETA’s pro-tofu billboard is located on I-95, 1.8 miles north of Exit 9, facing south.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”— opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.
