Professional Development Workshops
1. Teaching the Holocaust & Genocide: Remembrance, Education, Building Resiliency
Genocide is an extraordinary event, but the product of ordinary human behavior. How and why must we confront the past? This workshop provides guiding thoughts to navigate difficult issues utilizing frameworks for civic education that promotes competencies for democratic citizenship. What should we teach and how should we teach it? The methodological considerations we explore can be applied to any Social Studies or English curriculum. We will examine process, choice, and prevention. We will explore the pedagogical and contemporary challenges and considerations facing today’s classroom teacher. How do we confront the past to build resiliency, create safe enough spaces, while paying attention to escalating violence towards an “other”?
2. The Camera as Weapon: Deconstructing Imagery for Media Literacy & Competency
An important workshop in the media age to help students understand that photographs do not merely capture or illustrate the historical past, they interpret and manipulate it. Photojournalism emerged with the liberation of the camps and seeks to illustrate an event. Does it? What are the limitations and pitfalls? Did you know that Nazi photographers were designated as “weapons” of the Nazi effort? Why and how were photos used to propagate the perpetrators’ view? Before viewing their images do we recognize that they are not “illustrating” history but are instead part of the process of making mass atrocity possible? We must critically evaluate this evidence as much as we do written or oral material. We do not have to accept their version of reality. This workshop uses a series of competency expectations such as: recognizing perspective; intentionally; social, political context; elements of composition; expanding the frame; and asking, who took the photograph and why? Applying these competencies today will help students interpret propaganda, discuss historical comparisons and contrasts, and develop media literacy. Students will be able to deconstruct imagery, develop tools to resist manipulation, while developing a sense of the “moral universe” perpetrators operate in.
3. Teaching Anne Frank: To Be Free, to Be Myself
One of the valuable things about using Anne’s witness is that she was a teenager experiencing these events. Her voice, especially the growing depth of maturity and wisdom, can help our students discover their own potential and responsibility towards others. Students will learn how Anne shifted in her views about herself and others while facing enormous and increasing pressure. How does Anne's voice and wisdom become, as she hoped, "useful" as we face the challenges of today? How do we resist evil while maintaining our moral core? How do we challenge students to let others be who they choose to be? Drawing on the diary and Anne's experiences we will challenge our own prejudices and ask difficult questions of ourselves. The life and decisions of the Frank family (such as emigration and going into hiding) are placed within the context of the Nazi era. Otto Frank’s failed attempt to get his two children (Margot and Anne) into the United States begins a discussion of U.S. immigration policy and the villainization of immigrants and refugees. This presentation also traces the fate of those hiding in the Secret Annex. How can we draw on the example of the rescuers and of the Franks themselves to honor Anne's April 1944 wish, "If only I can be myself"?
4. Teaching Elie Wiesel: Trauma, Remembrance, and Hope
How can a survivor write about mass trauma? Why? Night is the first step of healing, a beginning, as Wiesel vents his anger. It is a beginning. How do we approach Wiesel’s work and witness and how does it help us approach but not be devasted by the Holocaust? This workshop presents Night as a constructed memoir, a crafted testimony; a matzeva (marker/gravestone) about the limits of witnessing and “surviving survival”. What choices did he make in retelling his story and why? Why are there white spaces in the text? How does his Hasidic Jewish identity shape the text and his encounter? How does he help us gain strength by witnessing someone else’s trauma? How will reading this book make me a better person and, as Wiesel believed, ignite the spark of goodness that exists in all of us? This workshop looks at the construction of Night; the questions it raises; its Hasidic framework; and how to teach it as the beginning of a journey against despair and towards resiliency.
5. NH’s Holocaust and Genocide Education Mandate: Building Resiliency Through Education
Recognizing that hate, bigotry, and antisemitism are toxic for democracies NH requires social studies classes (beginning Fall of 2022) to utilize existing curricula to implement Holocaust and genocide education. What is this requirement exactly and what are some best practices and frameworks to help meet the minimum standards? This session will define crimes of mass atrocity (war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide); explore guidelines; discuss how to compare and contrast mass atrocity; present available resources; opportunities for professional growth; discuss lesson planning and rationales; utilize competencies for democratic citizenship; and explore ways education can enhance civic responsibility and democratic values.
