Curriculum Overview

The FAIR curriculum consists of 5 activities. Each FAIR activity is designed so youth stay active and engaged. Visiting a FAIR is used as a metaphor throughout the program. Teachers and parents can follow the FAIR metaphor as they conduct the FAIR activities, or they may choose to keep the carnival theme out of the activities. Either method is acceptable.

Activity One (Tent One):
    "Images in Our Minds"

Tent One - Images in Our Minds The facilitator tells several short stories about people with different roles and responsibilities. After each story is read, students are asked what images came to their minds regarding the various people. The group discovers that it is common to associate gender, race, and class with certain roles and responsibilities. Media images are examples of some that reinforce our images. The activity encourages expanding our images and challenging our stereotypes.
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Activity Two (Tent Two):
    "Prize Sorting"

Tent Two - Prize Sorting In this activity, students will learn how gender is a major sorting force in our society and that this can lead to rigid gender roles that do not encourage the development of the whole person. The group is presented with several toys, including domestic, scientific, nursery, athletic, and medical toys, as well as board and computer games. They will be asked to sort the toys and place them into one of two boxes, one pink and one blue.
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Activity Three (Tent Three):
    "In the Box/Out of the Box Images"

Tent Three - In the Box/Out of the Box ImagesParticipants will go through magazines or collections of pictures to identify “in-the-box” and “out-of-the-box” images. “In-the-box” is a metaphor for rigid messages that limit our free expression to just be ourselves. The pictures are then pasted “in-the-box” and “out-of-the-box”, respectively, to reflect such qualities as they learn to recognize the limitations of these messages. The group discovers that toys often give us early messages about what girls and boys should “do.” The activity encourages the group to play with and “be” themselves with less gender rigidity.
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Activity Four (Tent Four):
     "Build a House"

Tent Four - Build a HouseFor this activity, youth are asked to reflect on how in our society, people are often expected to have the same outcome in life, regardless of the resources with which they begin. Students are divided into groups and given different amounts and kinds of materials to construct a model of a house. They are then asked to talk about the process of building the house in order to dispel class based (socioeconomic status) stereotypes. The group learns that you can’t tell the character of a person by how much money they have.
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Activity Five (Tent Five):
    "Marine Life Story"

Tent Five - Marine Life StoryIn this story, there are four animal creatures: a shark, a carp, a crab, and a dolphin. Each of these creatures resides in us all. After reading the story, students are asked to write or draw about times that they themselves acted like the shark, the carp, the crab, or the dolphin, and are asked to share these stories. This activity ends with youth making a commitment similar to the dolphin as they begin to work toward social justice in their everyday lives.
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