The Holocaust Center for Humanity's mission is to inspire teaching and learning for humanity in the schools and communities of the Northwest through study of the Holocaust.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Thursday, October 20, 2011
New Online Exhibit! Video Testimonies from 3 Washington State Survivors
New Online Exhibit! Excerpts of video testimonies from 3 Washington State Holocaust survivors. Exhibit includes maps, photo galleries, and timelines.
Katie Welch, a student at Charles Wright Academy in Tacoma, spent the summer as an intern for the Holocaust Center and helped to design the project. Katie's dedication, combined with her incredible research and technological skills helped to make these online video testimonies a user-friendly resource.
A corresponding teacher guide will be available in December.
This project was made possible thanks to funding from Humanities Washington and 4Culture.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Preparing her students to hear a survivor
Thousands of students will hear survivors this year through our speakers bureau. How do you prepare students for this experience? Here is one example of a teacher doing an outstanding job.
What do you do in your classroom to prepare your students? We want to know! Email us!
Anna Roberts, Olympic View Middle School, Mukilteo, WA
Will the students be reading any Holocaust-related books? Which ones?:
All students will have finished up reading Elie Wiesel's Night.
What will you be doing to prepare your students:
We prepare our students by sending a letter home, explaining to their parents the rare and special opportunity of having a Holocaust guest speaker come to visit and tell their life stories. In addition, we have them read up on our guest speaker, prior to that day, so they can anticipate what will be spoken about that day. Most importantly, we prepare our kids by going over behavior expectations during our time with the speaker and we have them prepare appropriate questions to ask our speaker, if given an opportunity for questions. All our students have learned the background of the Holocaust and have read Elie Wiesel's Night.
Group goals and goals for the speaker presentation: Our goal is to have our students make a personal connection through having the opportunity to hear from someone who witnessed first hand the atrocities of the Holocaust. having a speaker that was there and has their personal story to tell makes this part of history they have learned about much more real and in the process, deepens their understanding about this time. In addition, our goal is for kids to build empathy for those victims of the Holocaust.
Special Needs:
If possible, we would like a question and answer session that opens it up for kids to ask the guest speaker questions.
Additional Info:
We have had a guest speaker come to OV for the past 5 years when we began teaching Night commonly in our Language Arts blocks. Ann Freemon, now a teacher at Mariner HS, had seen Henry Friedman speak at another school and had encouraged us to book him as a guest speaker. Since then, we have invited a speaker every year. We value your efforts and time given to teach our kids life long lessons about the Holocaust.
What do you do in your classroom to prepare your students? We want to know! Email us!
Anna Roberts, Olympic View Middle School, Mukilteo, WA
Will the students be reading any Holocaust-related books? Which ones?:
All students will have finished up reading Elie Wiesel's Night.
What will you be doing to prepare your students:
We prepare our students by sending a letter home, explaining to their parents the rare and special opportunity of having a Holocaust guest speaker come to visit and tell their life stories. In addition, we have them read up on our guest speaker, prior to that day, so they can anticipate what will be spoken about that day. Most importantly, we prepare our kids by going over behavior expectations during our time with the speaker and we have them prepare appropriate questions to ask our speaker, if given an opportunity for questions. All our students have learned the background of the Holocaust and have read Elie Wiesel's Night.
Group goals and goals for the speaker presentation: Our goal is to have our students make a personal connection through having the opportunity to hear from someone who witnessed first hand the atrocities of the Holocaust. having a speaker that was there and has their personal story to tell makes this part of history they have learned about much more real and in the process, deepens their understanding about this time. In addition, our goal is for kids to build empathy for those victims of the Holocaust.
Special Needs:
If possible, we would like a question and answer session that opens it up for kids to ask the guest speaker questions.
Additional Info:
We have had a guest speaker come to OV for the past 5 years when we began teaching Night commonly in our Language Arts blocks. Ann Freemon, now a teacher at Mariner HS, had seen Henry Friedman speak at another school and had encouraged us to book him as a guest speaker. Since then, we have invited a speaker every year. We value your efforts and time given to teach our kids life long lessons about the Holocaust.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
7 years later...
Melissa Tatum, Sylvia O'Brian and Pat Gallagher - teachers in Kent - have worked together and taught the Holocaust for many years.
The other day, Ms. Tatum received the following email from a former student:
Mrs. Tatum,
Seven years ago, I was in 8th grade honors English with you, being co-taught by Mrs. O'Brian. We did a whole unit on the Holocaust and spent a significant period of time talking about it. Mrs. O'Brian posed the question "Was Hitler a great leader?" which nobody was able to answer at the time. I spent this past summer studying abroad in Africa, and have done extensive research and study on the current and past struggles of Africa recently. During colonization, King Leopold II of Belgium successfully manipulated his country, and the rest of the world into supporting him in the slaughtering of 10 million native peoples of the Congo. I have not thought about your class in a long time, but the question about Hitler lingered in the back of my mind as I learned about the colonization of Africa, and I think I finally have an answer. 13-year-old me was unwilling to call Hitler "great" for any reason. But, in all honesty, Hitler was a great leader. He successfully got and entire continent, if not an entire world, to believe what he believed, and manipulated people into helping him complete the genocide of millions of people. He was a terrible person, but he was a great leader. He was able to entrance a whole population into following him and his beliefs, and accomplished what he set out to do. So, seven years after the fact, I wanted to answer that question for you.
Monika
The other day, Ms. Tatum received the following email from a former student:
Mrs. Tatum,
Seven years ago, I was in 8th grade honors English with you, being co-taught by Mrs. O'Brian. We did a whole unit on the Holocaust and spent a significant period of time talking about it. Mrs. O'Brian posed the question "Was Hitler a great leader?" which nobody was able to answer at the time. I spent this past summer studying abroad in Africa, and have done extensive research and study on the current and past struggles of Africa recently. During colonization, King Leopold II of Belgium successfully manipulated his country, and the rest of the world into supporting him in the slaughtering of 10 million native peoples of the Congo. I have not thought about your class in a long time, but the question about Hitler lingered in the back of my mind as I learned about the colonization of Africa, and I think I finally have an answer. 13-year-old me was unwilling to call Hitler "great" for any reason. But, in all honesty, Hitler was a great leader. He successfully got and entire continent, if not an entire world, to believe what he believed, and manipulated people into helping him complete the genocide of millions of people. He was a terrible person, but he was a great leader. He was able to entrance a whole population into following him and his beliefs, and accomplished what he set out to do. So, seven years after the fact, I wanted to answer that question for you.
Monika
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