Designing a semester-long world cultures elective focused on core values

[Elizabeth.M]

I'm a high school social studies teacher designing a new semester-long elective on world cultures, and I want to move beyond the superficial "foods and festivals" approach to instead explore how core cultural values around concepts like time, community, and authority shape societal structures and individual behavior. I'm looking for compelling case studies or specific cultural practices that can serve as entry points for students to analyze these deeper frameworks, but I'm wary of oversimplifying or reinforcing stereotypes. For educators or anthropologists, what resources or methodologies have you found most effective for teaching about world cultures in a way that is both engaging and respectfully nuanced? How do you balance the need for generalization to teach broad concepts with the imperative to highlight diversity and avoid presenting any culture as monolithic?