Working closely with Dr. J Larry Brown, the nation’s leading domestic hunger expert, I wrote a 100+ page standards-based high school curriculum and then modified it for middle school students. This curriculum was the youth action component for actors Jeff Bridges and Leo DiCaprio’s Hollywood Entertainment Industry’s Hunger Free America Campaign.
I was contracted by the Heller School at Brandeis to write this curriculum after creating and producing the award-winning, five-part Memories, Voices & Choices series and classroom curriculum (in collaboration with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the SHOA Foundation, and the Gerda & Kurt Klein Foundation) while at MCET. More than 200,00 Students from 17 States participated live in the interactive satellite series.
kNOw Hunger is designed to inspire teachers and students to go deeper and to channel their energy, compassion and knowledge into action that will help eliminate hunger in our nation. Each unit explores a different aspect of hunger in America. As students work through each of the units, they acquire another piece of the “hunger puzzle,” equipping them with the knowledge and understanding to take action steps for developing a culminating class anti-hunger action plan.
kNOw Hunger was inspired by the life of Holocaust survivor and hunger activist Gerda Weissmann Klein. The Gerda and Kurt Klein Foundation creates opportunities for young people to understand injustice in the world and to translate that understanding into concrete, positive action.
TIME Classroom’s inTime highlights kNOw Hunger as a recommended resource. Over one million high school students received this magazine.
Here’s what Dr. J. Larry Brown said about working with me:
“Paula developed a national curriculum guide for public school teachers to direct young people in community service activities to address domestic hunger. This project involved several organizational entities, its chief challenge being to take varying ideas and interests and combine them into a coherent program. Paula was most instrumental in orchestrating the successful outcome from this mix. Moreover, I observed her ability to successfully operationalize this outcome in the form of a curriculum format and materials of ready usefulness to busy classroom teachers. Throughout this process, she was cordial, professional and most willing to take responsibility to shape the end product.…I recommend her highly and without any reservation whatsoever.”