HMCS Vancouver Pre-Deployment Brief - May 2024 (Web Version).pptx
Creating Effective Holocaust Education
1. Creating
Effective Holocaust
Education Programs to
Reach All Students
Carrie A. Olson
Denver Public Schools
Kepner Educational Excellence Program
Gloria M. Schwartz Memorial Keynote
3. Carrie’s Guidelines
1. Do no harm
2. Know your students
3. Be prepared
4. Educate yourself about history
5. Educate yourself about literature
6. Question yourself
7. You don’t have to teach it all
8. What’s your rationale?
9. Ask for help
6. Guideline #2
Know Your Students
• Who are your students? Age?
• What is their background knowledge?
• Public school? Private school?
Religious school?
• What are they learning from your
teaching?
7. Guideline #2 (continued)
Know Your Students
• What considerations need to be taken into
account regarding community in which
the children live?
• Have the students had direct or indirect
exposure to a genocide? Racism?
Persecution?
• What are expectations and knowledge of
the families for Holocaust education?
8. Guideline #3
Be Prepared
• Students’ reactions
• Families’ reactions
• Colleagues’ and administrators’
reactions
9. Students’ Stories
• Claudia’s question
• Jessica’s history teacher
• Juan’s text message
• Danny’s teaching his class
Ricky’s Story
10. Family Reactions
“What are you teaching my child?”
Espino/Rivera Family
“My sister said I need to learn this”
Trust in you as their child’s teacher
11. Colleagues & Administrators
Principals
Teachers sharing stories of growing up in the
Southwest (“No Mexicans or dogs allowed”)
Isabel and Mrs. Johnson
“Do I need to give them my ‘Holocaust’
talk?”
13. Guideline #4
Educate yourself (history)
• Pre-1933: Jewish life in Europe before the Holocaust, the aftermath of World
War I, the Nazi rise to power.
• 1933-1939: Dictatorship under the Third Reich, Early Stages of Persecution,
The First Concentration Camps
• 1939-1945: World War II in Europe, Bystanders, Perpetrators, Nazi Policy,
Murder of the Disabled (Euthanasia Program), Persecution and Murder of
Jews, Ghettos, Mobile Killing Squads (Einsatzgruppen), Expansion of the
Concentration Camp System, Killing Centers, Additional Victims of Nazi
Persecution, Jewish Resistance and Non-Jewish Resistance, Rescue, United
States, Death Marches, Liberation
• POST-1945: Postwar Trials, Displaced Persons Camps and Emigration
• Antisemitism: present day and historic; racism, prejudice, bystanders, etc.
• History of genocides
(www.USHMM.org)
15. Guideline #5
Educate yourself (literature)
Good literature…
• is developmentally appropriate.
• has illustrations, art, and photographs in good
children’s books are appropriate in content, tone, and
relation to text.
• is rooted in historical context and reflects historical
reality.
• present limited, recognizable human experience.
16. Guideline #5 (cont.)
Educate yourself (literature)
Good literature…
• highlights, rather than marginalizes, the Jewish
experience and particular Jewish responses during the
Shoah.
• brings students back from the Holocaust era into the
reassuring present.
• have the potential to motivate students to examine
their own lives and behaviors, promoting
opportunities to explore universal issues and themes
evoked by the unique stories of the Holocaust.
• Offers flexibility in the classroom (Shawn, 2001, p.
141).
18. Questions…
• Why are you teaching the Holocaust?
• What books are you using? Why not other titles?
• What movies do you show? Why? Do you show the
whole thing? Why or why not?
• Whose point of view do you teach? Why? Why don’t
you include others?
• When do you teach it? Why? What ages? Why?
• Do you have a survivor talk? Why or why not?
• What does it mean to teach the Holocaust
successfully? How do you know?
19. More questions…
• What are your own opinions about the Holocaust?
• What is your own area of interest? How does that play out
in the classroom?
• How do you react to students who don’t react how you
were expecting?
• How do you react to bullying, prejudice, antisemitic and
racial slurs, not only in the classroom but outside of the
classroom as well? How does all of this affect how you
teach? Or does it? Should it? Can you separate this?
Should you?
21. Guideline #7
You don’t have to teach it all
• No single class, syllabus, reading, etc. will
provide students with all they need.
• Inspire students to further their own
education and ask their own questions.
• Holocaust education requires careful,
deliberate planning but you don’t need to
cover everything.
23. My Guiding Question
Why are you teaching
about the Holocaust to
these students at this time
using these materials?
24. What’s Your Rationale?
Why do you teach about the Holocaust?
– Who are the students you are teaching?
– What do you want them to learn? Why?
– Do you teach it to all your students? Why
or why not?
– How do you teach it? Why?
– What materials/resources do you use?
Why?
27. Teaching for Understanding
and Transformation
“… Toward that end, we strive to help students grasp the
complexities of our subject matter and use the information
that we share with them in meaningful and creative ways. We
work to ensure that students will engage fully in mastering the
content of our lessons in thoughtful and personally
meaningful ways. As our reward, during our most effective
moments, we get a glimpse of our students being deeply
transformed by their learning experiences in a way that
facilitates their becoming full and active participants in the
world today…” (Ritchhard, R. & V. Boix-Mansilla, 2004).
