Curriculum Resources

Learn What People Are Saying about PassageWorks Curriculum

PassageWorks has been a pioneer in recognizing and responding to a need now demonstrated in a growing body of research: supporting students during critical transition years is an essential component of their resilience and future success. We now offer curricula for each transition in the Kindergarten through high school cycle of schooling: the transitions into and out of elementary, middle and high schools and a curriculum for “Newcomer” adolescents who are making the shift to the United States from another culture, country and language.

Each of the following curricula comes with detailed introductions, thorough lessons plans, and extensive appendices and teaching notes. First Steps Into Elementary School: a 16-week Curriculum to Support the Transition into the Kindergarten Year. Through play, verbal and artistic sharing, and reflective practices, this curriculum supports Kindergarten students in developing self-awareness and meaningful interpersonal connections. Students acknowledge the depth and range of changes that are taking place and have opportunities to build trust in themselves and in each other. A strong parent component strengthens families and guides parents to empower and honor their children during this transition. Making Healthy Transitions out of Elementary School: (for the 5th or 6th grade year) provides tools that help students and parents cope and thrive as they navigate the profound shift that comes with completing this stage of childhood and schooling and preparing for the academic, physiological, social and emotional challenges of adolescence and middle school. Entering the Culture of Middle School: (for the 6th or 7th grade year) strengthens individual identity while fostering meaningful new relationships across social divides. It promotes a culture of kindness and emotional and social competence that can mitigate the slide into incivility, insecurity and the lure of risk common to the middle school years. Journey into High School: (for the 9th or 10th grade year) is designed to build community, promote identity definition and resilience, and take students on an inward exploration of meaning and self-awareness, offering a healthy process for navigating transitions. Senior Passages: (for the 12th grade year) is a school-based approach to rites-of-passage designed to help students navigate the major transition at the completion of high school, which is often characterized by both deep anxiety and exquisite awakening. Newcomers Transition Curriculum: serves students who are recent immigrants, a population at especially high risk for alienation from school, school failure and self-destructive behaviors. This curriculum offers students the opportunity to honor the people, lands, cultures and personal identities they have left behind; reclaim and integrate aspects of their past; and become empowered to move with strength and confidence as they transition into a new school, culture and country.

“Immigrants have always brought our country huge gifts—knowledge, experience, cultural diversity. PassageWorks helps students to feel welcomed and honored here... students are not talked down to or seen as an intruder. In schools that aren’t adequately dealing with the needs of Newcomer students, a lot of students are dropping out and feeling a great sense of despair.” -Francisco Garcia-Quezada, Fieldstone Secondary School, Thiells, New York

Pricing: Two semester curricula - $1,500. One semester curricula - $1,000. Teachers or schools are eligible to purchase these programs after taking the Foundation Course. Cost includes 6-10 hours of consulting (email or telephone) in the first year of implementation.

"As weeks passed, I started to trust people for the first time in years. I was comfortable with them and I looked forward to seeing them in school every day. Remember all those times I said I hated everyone at my high school and that none of them were worth my time? Well, suddenly, I didn't hate anyone anymore. That's one of the things I learned has impacted me the most — that we are all the same. We all have fears and pains and some good sides and some bad sides. I judged people so easily before; I felt hate so easily. Senior Passages showed me a whole new way to look at people. I discovered the beauty of an open mind." -12th Grade Student