The Committee to Promote Respect in Schools (CYPRESS) was founded in 1999, and since its inception, its mission has been to build respect and appreciation for diversity in our schools and our community. The committee is comprised of current and retired educators and community volunteers.
To that end, CYPRESS has sponsored teacher workshops and provided curriculum matierals to help teachers use the lessons of the Holocaust, the Civil Rights movement, and other events in history to promote respect and tolerance.
Students and Tri-State residents alike have attended lectures, films, concerts, and the children's opera, Brundibar, all sponsored by CYPRESS.
A collection of Holocaust Oral Histories, from Steven Spielberg's worldwide Shoah Project, housed at the Evansville-Vanderburgh Central Library and available to the public, was made possible by CYPRESS.
CYPRESS's most recent project is an anti-bullying curriculum, HEART, with lesson plans for use in elementary and middle school classrooms and available to educators and other youth leaders at no charge.
CYPRESS has recently launched HEART, a bullying-prevention toolkit for teachers and parents. All activities are aligned with the Common Core State Standards.