The Tikkun Project
About this unit
Informed by the text Ve'ahavta L'reyacha Kamocha, Love Your Neighbour As You Love Yourself, students create, refine, and implement a plan to ensure that people in the community have what they need to be well. Students consider their favourite foods and learn to sort and evaluate them to decide what food would be best as part of a healthy meal for others. Students practice healthy activities and learn strategies for self-regulation as other tools that might be used in the development of a plan to help support others. The development and implementation of the final plan will be informed by advice and guidance from local experts from organizations that help support others. Students will evaluate the outcome of their plan against the criteria. This unit discusses things that all people need and brings students' attention to the idea that not everyone has access to having all their needs met. This should be thoughtfully approached in communities where students and families may be the ones who don't have access to healthy food.
critical challenge
Work together to make and follow a plan that will help to meet the needs of others in the community.
Note: The actions students choose to take to respond to the critical challenge can vary depending on what the students are interested in. In some years, students have focused on making sure that people have enough to eat and responded to the challenge by making healthy soup for clients at a women's shelter. In other years, students focused on mental health and created mindfulness kits to help others improve their self-regulation skills.
critical challenge Criteria
- • The plan meets an important need of others
• The plan responds to a need over time
• The plan is feasible for students to implement
Unit Goals
Curriculum Connections
- What are the best ways to stay healthy at home and school?
Students consider the foods they eat and learn to categorize them in different ways. They also consider the difference between feeling hungry and experiencing hunger.
How can we best learn about the needs of others?
Students list and compare different strategies to help themselves and others feel calm, alert, and ready in home and school settings. They learn to choose the strategies best suited to the time, tools, and expectations of the situation.
What makes an effective plan to help others feel healthy?
Students focus on developing tools and strategies to learn about the needs of others, and consider the extent to which the strategies they use to keep themselves well can be used to help others feel well.