Getting Started

• DETERMINE YOUR COMMUNITY NEEDS. (and your own.) Before beginning your #USvsHate project, you might invite feedback from students and other members of your school or classroom community. What learning, conversations, and public messaging may be most needed to encourage students and adults in your school to value all communities and treat everyone as part of “us”? You might ask:
  • Look at the #USvsHate Principles on our About page, and Winning Messages. Watch one of our launch videos amplifying lots of student voices (available on the side of this page). To make our school feel welcoming and inclusive for all students, what messages do our students need to hear daily?
  • We want to refuse both “hate” as bigotry and slurs, and behaviors denigrating “types of people” throughout our society. Think to yourself: recently, have you heard students or adults make derogatory remarks or express biased opinions about particular groups of people? What can we learn and do in our school or community for all of us to instead feel welcome, included, seen, respected, and valued?
  • What aspects of diversity in our school/community do we wish were better valued and appreciated?
  • Are there deeper issues of bias, fairness or justice in your school, community, or country that you wish your class would explore more? What are they?
  • You might now check out the Lessons on usvshate.org (see below). You don’t have to use them to make #USvsHate anti-hate messages, but it’s a great set of dialogue activities to consider.
• DETERMINE YOUR OWN NEEDS. What skills and knowledge can you build before leading students through the #USvsHate process? Check out our PD resources!, and dialogue tips and tools! For community, consider joining the #Schooltalking Facebook group and following our partner organizations.
• BUILD A COALITION. Consider how you can include colleagues, administrators, district staff, and families before you begin your project. Remind them: #USvsHate’s goal is to unite school communities in learning about our diverse society and each other, and to make public messages saying everyone is part of “us.” You may want to share this site with collaborators before you begin, and discuss student answers to the questions above. #Us really means all of us!  

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LESSONS

Review the lessons, if you’d like to! Again, you do not have to use #USvsHate lessons to submit messages to our national challenges. You can build anti-hate messaging into your existing curriculum or any school activities. Teachers have had particular luck with stand-alone lessons in our Lessons for Building an Inclusive School Community list. Check out our additional lessons (Lessons on Countering Specific Forms of Hate, Bias, and Injustice) as additions to longer units, now or later. If you choose lessons, choose ones that fit your preparation level so that you are ready to respond to student questions. Our PD resources offer tons of dialogue tips, too. You can also invite students to make #USvsHate messages after reading a great book or reviewing usvshate.org themselves!

See Teacher Stories and the backstory to winning messages for others’ experiences with specific lessons.

Remember the ultimate goals of #USvsHate: we want students to start to more fully know and value themselves and the people they share their school, community, and nation with, and we want to encourage students to start to take action against hate, bias, and injustice. Of course this is part of school! We have differing opinions in the U.S. about many things, but we can agree that all human beings should be supported, valued, and included.

#USvsHate lays the groundwork by insisting publicly that all people are equally valuable.

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If you use our lessons before inviting #USvsHate messaging, each of our Lesson pages offers suggestions for Before You Teach. Check out our PD resources, too.

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Invite students to create anti-hate messages in any media to complete any #USvsHate lesson or related curriculum. Let them explore prior winners as they consider possible message forms!

Look again at our #USvsHate Principles. Ask your students to imagine a school in a society where everyone is treated as equally valuable, diversity is explored and celebrated, bigotry is prevented, folks support each other, and everyone feels like they belong. What messages are on the walls, school website or loudspeaker, or circulating on social media or student phones? 

Now invite students to make the messages they want to see!

See our Guide to Making Your Message tab for all details on what we consider an #USvsHate message. You can also point students to that Guide tab and let them run with it.

Here are a few things to remember as students make messages:

• Students can make #USvsHate messages as individuals or in groups.
• Students’ messages can be made in any media. See prior winners: That means hand-drawn or digital images, to become stickers and posters or be shared digitally; essays; poems; performances or public actions documented in photos or on video; public service announcements, videos, memes, speeches, dance performances, and spoken word; op-eds; tshirt designs; art installations—the options are endless. An anti-hate message can be drawn by hand on paper, or created digitally using a phone or computer. A speech into a smartphone camera, a great letter to the editor, a photograph, a comic book, an infographic, a public event, or an animation can be an anti-hate message.
• Invite students to share and improve draft messages with peers.
  • Possible discussion questions:
  • How does each anti-hate message realize one of the goals on the Guide?
  • (**Pro tip: if #USvsHate messages are attempting to challenge stereotypes, don’t create negatively worded messages like “I am not [stereotype].” Those can plant the stereotype in viewers’ minds! Try creating a positive message that conveys who we are, not only who we are not.)
  • Will the message inspire viewers to improve their school or society? (You might look at our #USvsHate Principles again.)
  • What could be added or changed to make this message more powerful, and to reach an intended audience?
  • How could this public message help our community, or keep a necessary conversation going?
  • What else can we learn and do in our school or community for all of us to feel welcome, included, seen, respected, and valued?Suggested norms:
  • Do not disparage anyone’s message.
  • Find something about others’ messages that you can affirm and compliment in some way.
  • If you disagree with the message, address the message, while respecting the creator.
• In #USvsHate, we’ve seen students make crucial public messages about economic inequality, education opportunity, even climate change. Go for it and explain your thinking in your backstory when you submit!

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Share students’ anti-hate messaging locally. This is a crucial part of #USvsHate. Students and teachers are sharing messages locally on school walls, bulletin boards, websites, and T-shirts, via gallery walks, and in assemblies to highlight live speeches or presentations. We also encourage sharing in public spaces across your community – cafes, libraries, stores, museums, youth organizations, anywhere!

Then, submit “best” messages to #USvsHate for broader sharing in our national message challenges!

SUBMISSION INFO

Here are a few things to remember as you prepare to submit:

• Teachers can submit 5 entries max per class, per challenge! Consider inviting students to help you select entries.
• PLAN AHEAD: For students under 18, parent/guardian permission is required for any entry submitted with a student’s name on it. Here is that permission slip PDF. Otherwise, you must anonymize students when submitting.
• (Students under 18 who submit for themselves must prepare to get parent/guardian permission to share by first name if they win.)
• Any message submitted must be ready to share publicly. 
• Messages themselves should NOT contain a student’s full name or school name! (e.g., a student signature on a poster, or a school named in an introduction to a video). We only use first names and state to share out entries (with permission).
• When you submit, educators and students are invited to share the teaching, learning, and intentions behind messages. Plan ahead– we share these backstories publicly with winning entries!

Winning entries will be amplified nationally via our website and social media. A subset will be made into free posters and stickers for participants. Check out our latest winning messages!

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Now, take the most important followup step of all: ask students and colleagues what they want to learn and do NEXT in your school community. Is there a next topic on the website that people want to explore? Could a favorite #USvsHate activity be taught every year? Who could join #USvsHate in a next round? Go for it!

• To figure out “what’s next,” you might ask students and adults these questions:
  • What is one thing you learned from the #USvsHate activity, or are still thinking about?
  • If you could change one thing about the #USvsHate activity, what would you change?
  • Is there one way you’d improve the teaching or activities you did?
  • Which issue do you think students should learn about next? Why?
  • What other actions do you want to take toward schools and a society where everyone is treated as equally valuable human beings? How could students help lead next steps?
  • (Sign up with contributing organizations for ongoing resources.)

• Many #USvsHate teachers have reached out NEXT to colleagues in their school to invite them to teach lessons or make messages together. Teachers have shared their work with administrators, entire faculties, parents, and even school boards. Some are now doing #USvsHate schoolwide.

Our goal is to refuse hate together — and do the long-term work to treat all as equally valuable. Join us!

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