This year marks the fifth Great Thanksgiving Listen. The Great Listen is a national project that empowers young people to connect with an elder over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, and record an interview about their lives using the free StoryCorps App. For the past four years, we have all been working together — teachers, students, and StoryCorps — to create a culture of listening across the United States with the simple concept of asking students to honor someone in their lives with an interview over the Thanksgiving holiday.

This fall, StoryCorps invites teachers and students alike to perform the powerful act of sitting across from a grandparent, a sibling, a mentor, or a friend for 40 minutes, asking important questions, and listening carefully to their answers.

To that end, we put together the new 2019 Teacher Toolkit to help support the efforts of educators in classrooms across the country. It’s full of curriculum ideas and student handouts, tips for recording a great interview, and resources for implementing The Great Listen in your classroom over the next few months.

You can learn more at TheGreatListen.org, or download the 2019 Teacher Toolkit.

We look forward to making history with you and your students this year!

If you would like to hear from fellow educators or share your own experiences and tips for The Great Thanksgiving Listen, head over to the StoryCorps in the Classroom Facebook group.