Make This School Year Humane for Animals

With the start of the school year, students at K-12 college/university, and graduate levels may face an ethical dilemma: animal use in the classroom. If you are a student who doesn’t want to dissect, an educator who wants to offer a compassionate curriculum, or a parent who wants to help educate your child’s class about being kind to animals, Animalearn, AAVS’s education division, can arm you with the resources that you’ll need to cut cruelty out of the classroom.

Animalearn offers a host of humane education resources for both educators and students at no cost, including:

• Next of Kin: A Compassionate Interdisciplinary Science Curriculum (grades 2-5 & 6-9)
Developed by the New England Anti-Vivisection Society and Rachel Fouts-Carrico and distributed by Animalearn, Next of Kin is a comprehensive science curriculum with interdisciplinary activities, which offers students the option to participate in decision-making and cooperative, problem-solving tasks. The activities are designed to promote awareness, change attitudes, and spur actions to solve the problems facing animals, whether they live in captivity or their natural environments.

• Animalearn Animal Profiles (grades K-6)
These colorful fact sheets, which can be downloaded for free from the Animalearn website, provide interesting facts and fun puzzles regarding the most commonly dissected animals―earthworm, crawfish, rat, pig, cat. The goal of these educational kits is to give younger students a better appreciation and respect for these sometimes maligned animals in the hopes they will rebuff dissection in higher grades.

• The Science Bank (grades K-12, college, graduate)
Animalearn’s The Science Bank loan program helps educators and students from K-12, college, and graduate levels learn anatomy, physiology, and psychology without harming animals, themselves, or the Earth. Our loan program of over 450 realistic models, CD-roms, DVDs, life-like manikins, and more, has been offered to thousands of people for over a decade, and it is continually growing and expanding. For a complete list of the dissection alternatives offered through The Science Bank, please visit www.TheScienceBank.org, home to the latest in high-tech, animal-friendly education technology.

To learn more about Animalearn and its many humane education materials, please go to www.Animalearn.org .