About AllSides for Schools
VISION
Helping educators prepare students to participate thoughtfully in democracy – and in life.
MISSION
AllSides for Schools gives educators tools, resources, information, and curricular guidance to help students build skills in news literacy, bias awareness, critical thinking, and conversation across differences.
By teaching students how to critically evaluate news, media content, and other information on a range of topics and how to engage with others in productive dialogue, AllSides for Schools helps students participate thoughtfully in their communities and our democracy as they move through life.
WHY ALLSIDES FOR SCHOOLS?
Middle school, high school, and college classrooms across the U.S. are grappling with our complex political, cultural, and media landscape.
Students who want to effectively evaluate news and information and engage with others on complicated issues may not know how. Instead, they retreat into filter bubbles where they engage only with people and information that reinforce their existing beliefs and ideas.
In this challenging landscape, it is essential to equip students with media literacy skills to assess news and information more critically.
But that’s only half the challenge.
A healthy democracy also requires that we build relationships and have conversations with others on difficult topics, even (or especially) when we have different opinions.
AllSides for Schools does both by providing tools, resources, structure, and information at that critical juncture where information and engagement meet. This allows students to pop their filter bubbles by learning how to better evaluate information and navigate relationships both online and in person.
Educators seeking to address issues of fake news, low media literacy, filter bubbles, and toxic social media interactions find that AllSides for Schools gives students skills and experiences they’ll carry far beyond the classroom.
HOW ALLSIDES FOR SCHOOLS WAS BORN
AllSides for Schools was founded in 2019 as a joint nonprofit initiative of AllSides (news literacy and media bias), Living Room Conversations (fostering conversation and nurturing relationships across difference), and the Mediators Foundation (our nonprofit fiscal sponsor).
AllSides for Schools is a response to the needs of teachers who seek to address a double crisis in the classroom of decayed media literacy skills and atrophied abilities to communicate outside of the safe filter bubbles students had created for themselves in person and on social media.
Educators across the country were already taking advantage of the AllSides balanced news feed and Living Room Conversations topic guides. AllSides for Schools brings these two valuable resources together.
AllSides for Schools provides a more comprehensive digital media literacy experience by centralizing and expanding resources for teachers who want to bring lessons on news literacy, critical thinking, and conversation across difference into the classroom.
AllSides for Schools is a nonprofit program run by:
CONTACT US
Have a question about a tool or a resource we offer?
Have a story to share about successes or challenges you’ve encountered when using AllSides for Schools resources in your classroom?
Write us a note to tell us about it.
You can also email us at schools@allsides.com.
