Amidst all the challenges of reopening schools, the shooting of Jacob Blake is devastating. The continued violence and racial injustice are unacceptable – and alongside a pandemic, virtual teaching, extreme weather, and fires that are crushing communities, it’s hard for many of us to be fully present at school.

We’re focusing this week’s email on how to build a safe, culturally responsive classroom environment. You can find tips on discussing racial equity with your students, join a NAF Next speaker for a cultural competency training in September, or find tips on how to care for yourself and your colleagues so you can be ready to support your students.

Thank you for navigating countless challenges as we all head back to school. If there is anything we can do to support you, or if you have ideas of resources we can share to navigate this challenging moment, please let us know.

September is just around the corner! This week, we’re featuring our favorite ideas for the start of the school year – ones that can easily flex to a virtual or in-person classroom.

Engineering: Try the CubeSat Challenge. The US DOE is inviting high schools to design and build prototypes of a space satellite – it’s designed for virtual collaboration and no prior experience with satellites is necessary.

Finance & Business: Check out Everfi’s lessons introducing banking basics and financial literacy, then play this fun payment decisions game from NextGen Personal Finance to learn about the pros and cons of using a credit card vs. cash.

Health Sciences: Teach your intro students the basics of the human body with videos in this YouTube series by National Geographic, then try this mini-lesson from HOSA with engaging ideas on how to teach infection control.

Hospitality & Tourism: While many tourist destinations are closed, try using Google Maps to plan an exciting trip – and then give your culinary students the opportunity to design their own food truck with this project from CTE Online.

Information Technology: Orient your students to all the hot topics in tech with these coding tutorials from Scratch at MIT, this tutorial of everything HTML from W3Schools, and this fundamentals of cybersecurity course from Open P-TECH.

Racial Equity: In your conversations about race with your students, you can tie in career industry specific examples like this one for finance, tech, hospitality, or health sciences.

Join the NAF Educators Facebook Group to connect with colleagues from across the country! Learn, share, and get resources to help your students #BeFutureReady.

Send us great resources you think we should feature in our upcoming weekly emails – including any virtual activities you've created that you're willing to share!

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