What's New

What's New at PCMNY

Through the City to the World: Field Trips with a Social Conscience

Recognizing the popularity of school field trips, especially to certain destinations, members of Pax Christi's Education Committee decided to develop a series of study guides to selected sites to encourage critical thinking from a peace and justice perspective as promoted in Catholic Social Teaching. The original field trip locations numbered four: The United Nations and The Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum provide opportunities to compare and contrast different international conflict resolution strategies. The National Museum of the American Indian and Ellis Island present rich-ground for consideration of the impact of cross-cultural contact between indigenous people and voluntary immigrants.

In the process of developing these four sets of study guides, the Committee realized that an important cultural group was missing. Consequently, we have added a fifth field trip which will extend study to the experience of those whose immigration was not voluntary, but forced. Our fifth field trip site is to the African Burial Ground in lower Manhattan, a graveyard of African slaves.

The study guides for each field trip include three lesson plans: pre-trip, trip, and post-trip. They are designed for fourth/fifth grades, seventh/eighth grades, and eleventh/twelfth grades. All are written by practicing teachers at each of those grade levels. The lessons may be incorporated into the existing New York State social studies syllabus or the religion curriculum. In addition, we will be adding resources to our library to assist teachers in their use of the study guides.

Just War/Just Peace

This eight-lesson high school program that examines teachings of faith on war and peace and how they apply within U.S. economics, patriotism, responsible citizenship, military culture, and nonviolent alternatives is ready for use in September, 2008.

Starting a High School Pax Christi Group

Pax Christi has a few resources to help you start a local group with older adults and with young adults in a college/university setting, but the needs and interests of high school students are distinct. With that awareness, PCMNY has a pamphlet to help those at the high school level begin a Pax Christi group that is relevant and appealing to teens. One version of the pamphlet is directed to students and another is directed to teachers.

"Solidarity helps us to see the 'other'
-whether a person, people or nation-
as our 'neighbor,'
a 'helper' to be made a sharer
on a par with ourselves in the banquet of life
to which all are equally invited by God."

-Pope John Paul II, 1987
Sollicitudo Rei Socialis: The Social Concerns of the Church