Objectives of the Teaching Guide

  • To increase student understanding of the prevalence of youth participation in violent conflict and the challenges to addressing this global issue.
  • To familiarize students with strategies for conflict prevention, management, and resolution.
  • To develop students’ analytical reading, writing, and research skills.
  • To reinforce students’ abilities to collaborate and produce a work product with peers using traditional and electronic means of research, discussion, and document preparation.
  • To enable classroom teachers, students, and contest coordinators to:
    • understand the overall theme of the National Peace Essay Contest (NPEC) topic;
    • define and understand the concepts contained in the essay question;
    • formulate a thesis for their essay;
    • review bibliographic resources and select qualified sources for their research;
    • write, edit, and submit essays to the United States Institute of Peace.
  • To provide teachers with lesson plans, worksheets, bibliographic sources, and factual material to assist them in preparing students to write essays for submission to the National Peace Essay Contest.

Download the Teaching Guide

The Teaching Guide includes all lesson plans, student handouts and instructions. To request a hard copy of the teaching guide be mailed to you, please complete our online form.

The Teaching Guide is in PDF format. To view or print it you will need the free Adobe Acrobat reader.