While working with the Darfur Action Committee to educate the community about the situation in Darfur, I have had the opportunity to speak at different high schools, middle schools and youth groups here in LA. The teachers have adopted different mechanism to integrate the global issue being addressed into their curriculum. Below are some ideas about how you as teachers can arrange your lesson plans to involve students in what is happening around the world. These are only suggestions and your classroom would undoubtedly benefit from your ability to develop these ideas from your personal understanding of the classroom dynamic.
This project would ideally be gone over a semester, allowing more time for the students to research and understand one particular issue in depth. This will also facilitate long-term engagement with the idea, instead of a last minute work, which undoubted would only engage their short-term memory.

1. Discuss: Have a day when you discuss what is going on in the world. Asking students to research online events that are happening or being discussed in international news can facilitate this discussion. It may be appropriate to provide the addresses of international news sources, such as the BBC. From the topics, which the students bring up, you can expand the discussion with additional things that you aware of.

2. Topic: Ask each student to choose a topic that interests him or her. It may not be what they found on line, but each topic should be pre-approved by you, before they begin their research. (This is obvious to avoid things such as the crisis of the new mini-skirt trend).

3. Research: They will then have to research their topic each week, giving a short summary of what they have built into their project topic. This may mean following the news about a curtain issue, or background research. Ideally the topics history will be researched, at least on a basic level, in the first week or two of the project. ( For example: if they are looking at African Debt Crisis, they can follow current news to see how international players are discussing the topic, or what critiques/supporters are saying regarding the issue)

4. Action Plan: The final project would include a paper, but the goal would be for the students to development an action plan about how they can actually address the issue. This should be explained in the beginning so as they look into the issue, they can keep this in mind. As they develop their actions plans, they can also look at how they can work together to reach their goals. (If one person is looking at global hunger, and another at AIDS in Africa, they could work collectively to develop a fundraising campaign, like a bake sale or a garage sale).

5.Presentations: They should be required to make an oral presentation on the topic. This encourages them to be able to have a conversation about the issue they chose. Remind them that these are important issues, and they have the ability to share with others about what is happening, and change public opinion. Their presentation should include visuals, a brief history to the issue, current political and social response and what can be done to change the situation. These presentations ideally would also be made in front of parents and community members. This will not only show the students the important voice that they can have for change, but also serve to enlighten the community. Here it would also be important to emphasis actions items and include them in this evening, so that parents and community members can write letters to their representatives, donate money or change their consumer habits