Teaching Materials
Standards-aligned genocide education for middle and high school.
*Interdisciplinary, for English language arts, Geography, World History, Civics, and more.
Standards-aligned lesson plans on the Ten Stages of Genocide, for middle and high school. Every unit centers one stage of Gregory Stanton’s framework through a single case study, and includes the Series Guide, lesson plans, an anchor text, student handouts, a summative assessment, and a standards tracker.
Alignments use the California Common Core State Standards (ELA/Literacy) and the California History–Social Science content standards and analysis skills — verify against your district’s current pacing. A unit runs about two weeks. Teach one to hit targeted standards, or run the sequence over roughly ten weeks.
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Unit 1 — Classification in Darfur
Identity, “us and them,” and media rhetoric, taught through the genocide in Darfur, Sudan. Two lessons — Classification in Our World and Media Analysis & Counter-Narrative Creation — with anchor text, assessment, standards tracker, and student handouts. Includes the full Series Guide and Lesson 0.
Free to download. No sign-up, no email address, no account — the PDF is one click away.
The rest of the series
Free to download and free to use in your classroom. Same as Unit 1 — no sign-up and no email address required.
Complete Curriculum — Units 1–3
All three units in one volume, with the Series Guide, scope and sequence, Guidelines for Teaching Genocide, and Lesson 0. Roughly six weeks of instruction, or ten across the full sequence as later units publish.
Unit 2 — Symbolization in Cambodia
Cultural symbols, memory, and reconciliation under the Khmer Rouge. Three lessons on recognizing, weaponizing, and subverting symbols; designing a living memorial; and moving from awareness to action. Assessed with a symbol analysis project built around the krama.
Unit 3 — Discrimination in Afghanistan
Gender inequality, rights, and legal identity under Taliban rule, centering women and the Hazara. Three lessons: discrimination as a risk indicator, an advisory simulation on midstream prevention, and a document-based position paper.
Student Reader — Anchor Texts
Every anchor text in one student-facing volume. Useful if you want the readings in students’ hands without the teacher-facing apparatus, or if you’re piloting a single lesson before committing to a unit.
Optional · Nothing here is gated
Help fund the next unit
Currently, every unit is free to access. There is no sign-up or email to hand over, and nothing held back for people who don’t contribute.
Each unit takes months of work — archival research, handling survivor testimony carefully, standards alignment, and the writing and audio production behind the case study it’s built on. If one of these earned a place in your classroom, a contribution is what puts the next one on the site sooner.
Ten Stages of Change is an independent project, written and produced by one person.
Units for Stage 4 (Dehumanization — Rwanda) and Stage 5 (Organization — Myanmar) are in development. The written case studies and audio for those stages are already published.
Get the next unit when it lands
The series publishes one stage at a time. Subscribe and you’ll get an email when a new case study, narrated audio version, or classroom unit goes up — Rwanda and Myanmar are next. That’s all it’s for: every file on this page downloads without it.
Bring this to your school
If your school, district, or county office wants support teaching this material — a professional development session, a workshop on teaching emotionally difficult history, or help adapting the units to your pacing and standards — I work with educators directly.
Ten Stages of Change is written and produced by Joshua Bicknell. If you use a unit in your classroom, I’d genuinely like to hear how it went.