The #MeToo movement has inspired a “tsunami” of stories, from newspaper front pages to social media to private conversations between friends and relatives. It is, many believe, a watershed cultural moment.

Has it touched your community or school? How have you and your students responded?

As The Times’s new gender editor, Jessica Bennett, writes:

In the weeks since The New York Times and The New Yorker first broke stories of the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s decades-long abuse of women he worked with, the hashtag #MeToo has exploded on social media as a vehicle for women to share their stories. For perhaps the first time in history, powerful men are falling, like dominos, and women are being believed. But the #MeToo moment has become something larger: a lens through which we view the world, a sense of blinders being taken off.

In this unit, we pull together a wealth of Times reporting, opinion and video to suggest several ways to begin confronting the questions and issues the movement raises. We asked Christopher Pepper, a health educator in the San Francisco Unified School District who helped design the district’s high school sex education curriculum, to co-write this piece with Learning Network staff. Before beginning, we suggest reading our advice on talking about sensitive issues in the news.

Though we realize there is already enough here for at least a week’s-worth of work, we’d love to add your ideas as well. How are you talking about these issues in your school or classroom? Please let us know in the comments.



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Warm-Up

Begin the lesson by having students write about what they already know, or think they know, about sexual harassment and the #MeToo movement.