ProQuest Platinum
Hero in Pursuit of World Peace
October 5 is the 25th anniversary of the awarding of the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize to Solidarity leader Lech Walesa of Poland. This topic is especially appropriate because October is Polish American Heritage Month.



Using ProQuest Platinum, assign students to choose three of the past winners of the Nobel Peace Prize and to provide a brief bio along with the work that they did to support the issues that were worthy of the Nobel Prize.

SIRS Spotlights + Challenge Quests
National Hispanic Awareness Month is an annual celebration of the culture, traditions, achievements and heritage of Hispanic Americans.

Our Spotlight of the Month commemorates the myriad contributions of Hispanic Americans and emphasizes the diversity of Hispanic culture in the United States.

El Dia de los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead, is an important holiday to Mexican and Hispanic-American communities in the United States.

What is the traditional flower of the Day of the Dead? Our new SIRS Challenge Quests awaits!

CultureGrams
Cultural Diversity Awareness
October is Diversity Awareness Month. To make students more aware of some of the differences between cultures, have them use the CultureGrams World Edition to compare the communication styles of people in Sub-Saharan African countries (or another region) with communication styles in the United States.

What communication practices are common in the country? What practices are taboo? How do people in the country regard body language, personal space, and eye contact? Only CultureGrams has the answers.


World Conflicts Today
Pacifists & Spies
A major UN mission is to help resolve conflicts between nations peacefully. Recently the UN General Assembly voted to observe an International Day of Non-Violence each year on Oct. 2, the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi.

Ghandi, like Martin Luther King, was an honest and courageous leader whose commitment to passive resistance was unequivocal. But your students can learn about people whose commitment to peaceful tactics may have been more pragmatic. The open-ended cease-fire, which the Irish Republican Army (IRA) declared in 1994, paved the way for the talks that produced the Good Friday Agreement four years later. Find out more.

Explore additional history-related themes inside History Happenings, our hands-on social studies enewsletter.

Historical Newspapers
The Martians are Coming!
October 30 marks the 70th anniversary of the day that Orson Welles scared the nation in 1938. His realistic radio broadcast of War of the Worlds was not planned as a hoax, and Welles had little idea of the havoc it would cause.

The entertainment industry has both reflected American culture and created American culture through radio, television, the movies, and now the Internet. Assign students research the impact of entertainment on our culture in the past.

This month, students can select one of the eras of entertainment from the past and create a report or presentation that cites at least three resources and addresses one or more of our essential questions.

Top 3 Websites
Each month, our editorial team scours the Internet for top-quality sites for teachers and students.