3 weeks to teach...

This year my time spent teaching the Holocaust has been reduced from a quarter to maybe 3 weeks.  I am now teaching social studies instead of literature.  Trying to condense my material has been quite a challenge.  That is the main reason I chose to continue using the Echoes and Reflections curriculum with my8th grade students. I have had great success with this program in the past. This program is divided into ten lessons.  Each lesson provides a historical context for the topic as well as survivor testimony and primary source material, including photographs, diary entries, poems and historical documents.  You certainly do not have to teach everything in each unit or even teach all of the units, but incorporating the survivor testimony would be a great way to bring the individual aspect of Holocaust study to you students. 

In addition to Echoes and Reflections, I am still having my students read a variety of Holocaust literature.  Within their literature circle groups, they read The Diary of Anne Frank, A Coming Evil, The Boy Who Dared, Behind the Bedroom Wall, Torn Thread, Play to the Angels, Someone Named Eva, Yellow Star, I Have Lived a Thousand Years and All But My Life.

As a class they will read Surviving Hitler by Andrea Warren.  This memoir chronicles the experiences of local Holocaust survivor, Jack Mandelbaum during his adolescent years in World War II Europe.  There is an excellent teaching guide for this selection on the MCHE web site (requires registration).

 

I always have my students use the MCHE or USHMM websites for any information that they need for assignments or projects in my class.

 

Why Anne Frank shouldn't be taught

At the last Midwest Center for Holocaust Education cadre meeting I attended, one of our members mentioned that she had heard a Holocaust scholar say The Diary of Anne Frank should not be taught anymore.  At first, I was as surprised as anyone might be.  But, as I was thinking about what I could write for this month, I was perusing Teaching Holocaust Literature, edited by Samuel Totten, and there was an entire chapter devoted to this same topic.  So, I felt compelled to re-read the chapter and weigh the reasons behind the rationale to stop teaching Anne Frank.

In the chapter by Elaine Culbertson, she explains that Anne Frank’s story is not the usual story of a victim of the Holocaust.  Most victims were not in hiding, nor were there rescuers helping them as there are in Anne Frank’s story.  In fact, less than one percent of non-Jewish Europeans rescued anyone during the Holocaust, and some of the people who did rescue did so for monetary gain rather than out of the goodness of his/her heart. 

While I definitely understand that it may be difficult to go through the process of finding a replacement and having it approved in the curriculum, there are many resources that could replace Anne Frank if a teacher was willing to use smaller pieces, which would perhaps be even better because smaller pieces fit the common core requirements.  A teacher could implement several excerpts from memoirs, poetry and other Holocaust literature, such as diaries, letters, and more.  A great resource for this would be the Echoes and Reflections curriculum that is packed with excerpts.  Another resource might be web sites such as www.mchekc.org or www.ushmm.org and the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education’s resource library.  Culbertson also has several recommendations in Teaching Holocaust Literature.  Whatever resource a teacher chooses, hopefully he/she will reconsider teaching The Diary of Anne Frank.

Totten, Samuel.  Teaching Holocaust Literature.  Boston:  Allyn and Bacon, 2001.  Print.

Fall 2012 School Programs announced

WHITE ROSE STUDENT ESSAY CONTEST
 
The Midwest Center for Holocaust Education is pleased to announce its eighteenth annual White Rose Student Essay Contest, open to 8th through 12th grade students in the 18 county Greater Kansas City area. This year's contest commemorates the 80th anniversary of the Nazi rise to power and is designed to address the new Common Core education standards.

Click here for complete theme, research sources, teaching tools, criteria and entry forms.
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FLIGHT FROM THE REICH: A PROGRAM FOR EDUCATORS

October 15, 2012
4:30-7:30 p.m.


Conference Room C
Jewish Community Campus
5801 West 115th Street
Overland Park, Kansas

Join Scott Miller, Director of Curatorial Affairs at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, as he discusses Jewish emigration from the Reich and the search for safe havens in the 1930s. Co-author of Refuge Denied: The St. Louis Passengers and the Holocaust, Mr. Miller spent a decade tracing the fates of the 937 passengers aboard the St. Louis and exploring how their lives were impacted by immigration and refugee policies.

This training is offered in conjunction with the White Rose Student Essay Contest and directly addresses the 2012-2013 theme. Educators interested in sponsoring student essays are encouraged to attend, but all 7th-12th grade educators are welcome.

A registration fee of $20 includes light supper. Registration is available by clicking here.
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ECHOES AND REFLECTIONS CURRICULUM TRAINING

December 11, 2012
4:30-8:00

MAC Room
Jewish Community Campus   5801 West 115th Street   Overland Park, Kansas

This training prepares 7th-12th grade teachers to implement the Echoes and Reflections curriculum. A $25.00 course fee includes a complimentary copy of the curriculum ($100 retail value), light supper, and valuable handouts and resource materials. Educators who register by November 21, 2012 will receive a coupon good for 10% off on-site resource purchases the day of the course. CLICK HERE to register for the December 11th training.

Very little time? No problem!

It's amazing how quickly the end of the school year can come once May begins. This past year I taught Advanced Studies World History to 10th graders for the first time. When teaching a new course I find it difficult to stay on a set schedule with the units. While I am using materials created by others who have taught the course I like to adjust things and find or create new lessons. The end result was that I found myself with very little time at the end of the semester to cover World War II and the Holocaust. Originally I had grand plans of spending a few weeks covering these topics. Instead I only had a couple of weeks. I went into scramble mode to think of ways to teach the Holocaust. The Echoes and Reflections curriculum provided the solution. The great part of this curriculum is the ability to use it in small or larger pieces. It includes very short (generally 1-2 minutes long) video clips as well as lesson plans with documents. Here is how I used it.

• As part of our look at the Nazi ideology and antisemitism I showed Echoes & Reflections video clips from Lesson 2 (Part 1) which consisted of survivors discussing life before the war in Germany and examples of antisemitism. 
• As part of the discussion on Nazi propaganda with emphasis on how Jews represented I showed Echoes & Reflections video clips - Lesson 2 (Part 2) in which survivors talk about their experience with Nazi propaganda. 
• When it came to look at the ghettos I showed Echoes & Reflections video clips - Lesson 4 which includes testimony that provides a very thorough look at life in the ghettos. In addition I used the Echoes & Reflections student handouts on "The Ghettos" & "Excerpts from The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak". There are questions that can be used to guide discussion. 
• Finally, in studying Liberation I used Echoes & Reflections video clips - Lesson 8 which covers the topics of liberation and also the DP camps.

 These weren't the only topics I covered but they were the ones in which the Echoes and Reflections curriculum proved most useful to meet my needs. I won't let this happen next year. The Holocaust will be covered in greater detail over a longer time frame. However I still plan to use the Echoes and Reflections curriculum extensively. It is comforting to know that if I leave myself short on time that I can fall back on the lessons from the curriculum. If you get the chance to attend a training or just purchase the curriculum do it without hesitation. It is thorough in its coverage of the Holocaust but can be easily used in small segments to meet your needs.

Bystanders, Collaborators and Perpetrators

Recently at MCHE we went through some “refresher” training in a curriculum series titled Echoes and Reflections.  This is a really great resource for teachers, especially if you had a class or an entire unit designated to Holocaust studies.  But, I am not one of those lucky teachers.  In fact I teach US History, so I always have to find creative ways to work in Holocaust education into my classroom during our unit on WWII.  I’ve blogged aboutways to do this in earlier posts such as comparing and contrasting Jim Crow andNuremberg Laws.  I’ve used readings from the book Race and Membership inAmerican History:  The Eugenics Movement, which was created by Facing History and Ourselves to examine eugenics programs and racial misconceptions in both the US and Germany.     

The newest lesson I introduced this year was dealing with the terms:  bystanders, collaborators, and perpetrators.  I used a lesson from the Echoes and Reflections curriculum that has students define the terms and then apply them to a document.  The document is an official report discussing one particular Jewish transport.  In this lesson, I had students first define the terms bystander, collaborator, and perpetrator.  We discussed the definitions and came to a consensus on each definition.  Then they read the report and made a list of all people who were involved or aware of the transport.  We discussed that list as a class and then I asked students to label who was a bystander, collaborator, and perpetrator based on the definitions.  

We then went over the labels and it was really very interesting to see how the students came up with different labels for most of the people.  We then had a group discussion about these three terms and how you determine who should be held accountable and how. For example, we asked if the US was a bystander and if so what was our responsibility?   My students really wrestled with these questions and I think it helped, once again, to establish the complexity of the Holocaust in dealing with the subject of responsibility and accountability. 

Training on this curriculum is available through the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education in July - and all registered participants receive a free copy of the curriculum valued at $100. If you are not able to attend a training, you can still check a copy of the curriculum out of the MCHE Resource Center.