When I read a story short about a cult with my ninth graders recently, I knew society was in trouble. Not only could they not identify that the manipulation and abuse described in the story characterized a cult, four of them over the course of the day expressed some variation of “that place sounds kinda nice.” Good grief. If we don’t teach these kids about cults, they’re doomed. I don’t want to read about some sweet kid from my class getting murdered on a compound in the middle of nowhere. Not on my watch!

Besides the obvious benefit of not getting suckered into giving some nutjob their life savings, students can learn a lot about human nature, psychology, and critical thinking by researching and learning about cults. And, you know, it’s a really interesting topic…even in May, when the days are long and the motivation is low. Not to mention that they’ll be duped into critical thinking, taking notes, and writing paragraphs. Sneaky.

After next week, these kids will know all about:

The Branch Davidians (David Koresh)

The Manson Family (Charles Manson)

The People’s Temple (Jim Jones)

NXVIM (Keith Raniere and Allison Mack)

Order of the Solar Temple (Julien Origas)

Heaven’s Gate (Marshall Applewhite)

Angel’s Landing (Lou Castro)

The Family (Anne Hamilton-Byrne)

If you’re needing something high-engagement (and low prep) to survive the next couple of weeks, check out the new unit on TpT here. There’s a TpT sale, and it’ll be 20% off for the next two days, so just $7.19. That’s, like 75 cents a day to get through until break. The coke machine ate twice that much just this morning!

Keywords: cults, research, critical thinking, digital unit, Google Cloud assignments, secondary ELA, ELL, SPED, writing organizers, research organizers, writing, text evidence, note taking, high engagement, branch davidians, heaven’s gate, people’s temple, jonestown, NXIVM, solar temple, angel’s landing, the family, E2E, Enraged2Engaged