What is the Tour for Tolerance?
The Tour for Tolerance prototype bus will be a high-tech classroom for teaching tolerance. The bus can travel to 100+ schools and youth venues per year, bringing tolerance education to 50,000+ students – for FREE. Once the prototype bus is established, we will continue developing tolerance resources towards the goal of reaching millions of students in years to come.
What happens on the Tour bus?
The bus experience is unique and compelling, combining immersive technology with small group discussions to ignite student’s empathy and accountability for one another. Tour visits will be a three-part experience. The first will engage, the second will inform, the third will empower and motivate a commitment to more tolerant behavior. Read more
How are Tour visits organized?
On school days, the bus parks adjacent to the school it’s visiting. Typically, one class of students at a time will visit the bus for a class period of 40 minutes. A bus will serve a school from one day to one week, with a minimum of six classes per day visiting the bus. The Tour experience is designed for middle and high school students and is customized for different grade levels.
During after school hours, weekends, and the summer, buses will visit other youth serving sites, such as community centers, youth programs, and camps. Buses will be in operation 5 – 7 days a week and each bus will serve 50,000+ youth annually.
How are schools selected for the Tour?
Many schools recognize that teaching tolerance is a critical component of 21st century education, necessary for the dignity, preservation and success of the diverse communities—family, school, workplace, the municipality—that compose our country and the world. However, despite the dire need for tolerance education in these increasingly divisive times, resources for teaching tolerance—and access to those resources—are limited, creating the urgency for a service that brings tolerance education to masses of youth.
To respond to both the need and demand for our free service, the Tour for Tolerance will feature a dynamic outreach campaign that promotes our resource to all schools and youth venues within range of our buses.
How are the buses staffed?
Buses are staffed by a driver and a Tour Manager, who leads the students through the Tour experience. The teacher whose class is visiting the bus will also accompany the students, and receive pre- and post-visit materials along with technical assistance to maximize the impact of the Tour.
How does Tour for Tolerance interact with other tolerance-based programming?
The Tour bus is an innovative environment not possible in a classroom. Tour visits, however, can serve as a powerful introduction or supplement to classroom-based tolerance lessons and we offer additional resources, including curricula and technical assistance, for sites who take the Tour.
Will the impact of Tour visits be evaluated?
We will conduct ongoing assessments of Tour visitors to measure how well we are achieving our goals and the goals of the sites which take the Tour. The assessments will be reviewed regularly as a critical element in modifying our services to generate optimal impact.