Instructors in the pilot schools recommended that the program not impose a strict definition of the concept of "hero" on the students. They echoed: "Let the students grapple with the concept before they reach defining characteristics." In each Hero Profile Unit, the students are asked to think about whether the person studied is a hero and to justify their opinion with facts.

Before you begin your work with students, hold a discussion about this program with members of your school's Parent Association and, if possible, with community leaders. Get them involved early so that they can participate, support, and share their own ideas about heroes with the students. A STUDY OF HEROES stresses conflict resolution, issues of right and wrong, and community and civic responsibility.
 

Getting Started: Who Is Your Hero?

It is recommended that you begin with the Companion Unit entitled "Getting Started: Who Is Your Hero?," using it for diagnostic and evaluative purposes. With this unit, you will be able to learn your students' opinions of and prior knowledge about heroes.
 

Wilma Mankiller

Heroic Character Traits From A to Z

Follow the evaluation unit with the Companion Unit entitled "Heroic Character Traits from A to Z." This unit introduces the concept of heroes by identifying the heroic traits found in most real heroes-one per letter of the alphabet. After assessing your students' understanding of heroes and introducing hero character traits, teach as many of the 22 biographical Hero Profile Units as you like, beginning with Raoul Wallenberg. Then complete your study of heroes with any of the six other Companion Units you deem appropriate for your students.
 

22 Hero Profile Units

1. All the Hero Profile Units follow the same basic format. First review a whole unit, and then pick and choose which activities are most appropriate for your students and your instructional time constraints.

2. The materials in each unit are organized in three levels, from the most complex to the most basic. Each unit begins with general instructions for using the unit and then with suggested activities that students might do. A contextual timeline, follows – not of the individual hero’s life – but listing social and political events, technological and medical discoveries, inventions, and other interesting events that took place during the hero’s lifetime. This time line should be read by or to the students (as age/ability appropriate) at the beginning of the unit. This is truly fun and fascinates both teachers and students. Do you know who and when the safety-pin was invented? [Clue: take a look at the Timeline in the Harriet Tubman unit.]

3. Next are readings and activity sheets for students at three readability levels. Each of the three levels in each unit contain different details and activities, with Level III containing the richest detail and Level I typically providing interesting art activities.

4. Instructors of all three levels should read the hero biography contained in Level III of each unit. This reading provides background information useful for instruction at all three of the levels. The biographies are also used as a student reading at Level III.

5. The "Sharing" sections at the end of almost all the student activity sheets encourage intergenerational communication about heroes. It is hoped that students will discover the hero within themselves, their families, their communities, and their culture.

6. The program materials lend themselves to a discussion of historical and contemporary social issues and the various roles heroes play in shaping our lives and the future of the world.

7. After the students learn about a particular hero, they are directed to retell the story of the hero in a modified round-robin style or through other creative storytelling or communication formats in order to probe comprehension.

8. Geography and maps are included in the study of the heroes. It is important for students to comprehend the value of placing the individual within an historical and geo-political context.

9. Discussions about careers revealed in the student readings are prompted.

10. Discussion and hands-on activities about conflict resolution, negotiation, and leadership abilities revealed in the student readings and related activities are emphasized.

11. Also emphasized is the importance of understanding the historical context of each hero's life. Discussed are technologies, political issues, risks and dangers, conflicts and resolutions, and general social practices common to the hero's lifetime.

12. Remember that these units were designed as a complement to mandated curriculum materials and educational standards. They reinforce "the basics," and encourage critical thinking skills. They emphasize character development and can be useful in guidance sessions. These units can be used within a wide range of academic subjects, including art, music, creative writing, vocabulary development, dramatics, letter writing, mathematics and statistics, journalism, and storytelling.
 

Thomas Jefferson

A Hero of Your Choice

This Companion Unit requires each student to identify a hero of his or her own choice. The hero may be someone the student knows personally, has heard or read about, or someone whose heroic actions have sparked an interest. The selected hero may be famous or not famous. The format for the creation of your own Hero’s Unit is clearly defined, and yet it encourages students to use both their talents and intellect to create a unit worthy of their personal hero.

Students create timelines reflecting the contexts in which the hero lives/or has lived. These contexts include: the historical; the geo-political; the technological; the cultural; the socio-economic; and the intra and inter personal context. Students create or use maps to simulate a hero’s travels and activities. They write speeches about their personal hero for a "selected audience or organization;" They write newspaper articles that address the who, what, where, when, and why of journalism. The students create artistic works that reflect the character and actions of their heroes including poetry, dramatic enactments, storytelling, choreography, composing music and writing lyrics, as well as drawing social commentary cartoons. They use the letters of the alphabet as a framework for identifying their hero’s character traits and moreover they use Venn Diagrams to compare and contrast heroes.

Debate is at the heart of this unit. With their instructor, students defend and explore the heroic character traits of the selected heroes – always asking, "Is this person worthy of being called a real hero?"

In states where social studies standards include state history, this can be a particularly exciting project for both students and instructors. As students choose the person from their state that they feel is a true hero, this can be a wonderful method for the development of sound research skills.

A National Tradition: Heroes, Holidays & Hoopla

This Companion Unit initiates discussion about the many ways in which heroes are honored. The activities may be used to initiate student research about contemporary holidays, their significance, and when and why they were established.
 

Heroes: Generation to Generation

The activities in this Companion Unit help students explore the concept of heroes with members of a different generation. Ideally, the students will explore this concept by interviewing people from a range of generations. In addition to helping the students explore how the concept of heroes changes over time, the activities teach interviewing, recording, and reporting skills.
 

The Hero Within Yourself

This Companion Unit is, perhaps, the most important in the collection. The activities help the students make an amazing discovery: they realize that they all have the potential to be heroes. They develop self-respect and respect for others, which enables them to reach out and make a positive difference in the lives of others. Students also learn that they need to stop, look, and assess a situation, and then decide when to act, not act, seek the help of others, and/or tell an adult. The activities reinforce the fact that a hero can be any age, and that an act of heroism can be large or small and can occur frequently or once in a lifetime.
 

Helen Keller & Annie Sulivan

Educators as Heroes

The purpose of this Unit is to convey to students the realization that many educators are real heroes. Students will identify educators who are special in their lives; interview others about who their favorite educator hero is or was, and analyze why those educators were real heroes; share the information they learn with their classmates; and try to contact the hero educators to let them know what they have meant to them, to others, and to the community.
 

Researching Heroes: Ethical Strategies, Tools & Technologies

Good character must exist in all parts of our lives. When conducting research in books or when using any and all available technologies, good character is always important. Students must learn to check their sources, confirm the accuracy of information, recognize "editorial slants or bias," and give appropriate acknowledgement to their sources. They must learn to respect copyrights and learn how to acquire permission to use information or materials when needed. This units helps them learn the correct formats for citations whether from: newspapers; magazines; journals; television; radio; works of art; the Web; monuments; archives; special collections; or from anecdotal reports and interviews. It is important that students learn to draw information from a diverse research base. For younger students, we encourage the instructor to create a scrapbook about heroes. All the directions for this project are included in this unit. Also included are “safe” websites that we have reviewed and recommend.
 

Heroes Units:

• Getting Started: Who Is Your Hero?
• Heroic Character Traits from A to Z
   
• Raoul Wallenberg
• Harriet Tubman
• Mahatma Gandhi
• Eleanor Roosevelt
• Rosa Parks
• The Dalai Lama
• Anwar Sadat
• Abraham Lincoln
• Pope John XXIII
• Chai Ling: Student at Tiananmen Square
• Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Andrei Sakharov
• Mother Teresa
• Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan
• James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner
• Jacobo Timerman
• Cesar Chavez
• Roberto Clemente
• Albert Schweitzer
• Arthur Ashe
• Chief Wilma Mankiller
• Thomas Jefferson
   
• A Hero of Your Choice
• A National Tradition: Heroes, Holidays & Hoopla
• Heroes: Generation to Generation
• The Hero Within Yourself
• Educators as Heroes
• Researching Heroes: Ethical Strategies, Tools & Technology
   
• The Instructor's Guide

Sample Pages

The remaining pages in this Program Overview illustrate selected student activity pages from all three levels of the program. While the complete program contains more than 2000 pages, the following samples highlight some important and recurring program elements that will help you to evaluate A STUDY OF HEROES as an effective academic and character development resource for your school or organization.