"I am writing to see if some readers might be willing to help us locate K-12 classroom teachers who would volunteer to field-test a lesson or two in the fall.

"The Council of Michigan Foundations, with support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Lilly Endowment, has been working on a project to write and test lesson plans which can be used to infuse the teaching of philanthropy (giving, serving, and private action for the public good) into the core academic curriuclum of public and private K12 schools.

"For the past year, 43 Michigan teachers working in a variety of classroom settings (Kindergarten through grade 12) have been writing the lesson plans. The schools are public and private. Currently the teachers are piloting the lessons in their own classrooms. Over the summer, the lessons will be rewritten based on the project teachers' experiences. In the fall semester of 1998 we will need 5 teachers, who are not already involved in the project, to field-test each lesson. Since there are over 250 lesson plans, more that 1,250 teachers are needed in all. We are looking for some help in locating teachers willing to volunteer. Also, variety in geography and other demographic characteristics of the field test sites will strenthen the quality of the final lesson plans.

"When completed (spring 1999), the lesson plans will be made freely available to all teachers through the project web site (http://www.msu.edu/~k12phil/).

"The Michigan Council for Social Studies (the social studies teachers' professional organization) has endorsed the project and we will find some teachers in that network. We also have a partnership with the Indiana Humanities Council and the Indiana Center on Philanthropy. They are developing materials to teach children about philanthropy through youth groups and religious organizations (working with SEARCH). When all of our materials are ready, we hope to find selected communities where the youth group, religious organization, and K-12 school system will try out all of the materials in one geographic area....so we expect quite a few Indiana teachers as a result of IU's help.

"But, for this field test we would like at least a teacher or two in every state.

"If can help us locate teachers in your area, we would be happy to send you a sample letter to prospective volunteer teachers, and some responder cards that they can return to us. We will contact them in August to confirm their interest, and to match teachers to the lesson plans.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy (http://www.philanthropy.com/) has published another Op-Ed piece by Putnam Barber, this one about three destructive mistaken notions of philanthropy. You can read it online at http://www.nonprofit-info.org/misc/9805chron.html

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