Curriculum
Hints
Studying
the Holocaust, from the early grades through high school,
is more a conceptual process than a factual one. It is the
students' understandings, informed by their classroom and
real-world experiences, which give meaning to the knowledge,
attitudes, values, and beliefs with which they come into contact
throughout their K-12 pursuit. A meaningful study of the Holocaust
promotes consistent and cumulative learning from level to
level providing students with networks that connect knowledge,
skills and beliefs. The study of the Holocaust should be interdisciplinary
and integrated across all of the disciplines when appropriate.
Instruction should be challenging and suitable with high expectations
about the ability of all students to grasp the implications
and lessons of the Holocaust. It demands that teachers adapt
instruction to students in meaningful ways promoting reflective
thinking and decision making. Students should be made culturally
sensitive and aware of opposing points of view, aware of their
responsibility to promote the common good and committed to
social responsibility and action.
The
following matrix, classroom blueprints,
and vignettes offer an opportunity to take a look at classrooms
and see the interaction between processes and interdisciplinary
instruction. The study of the Holocaust requires more than
reading a textbook. Students need to be engaged in the process
of learning with opportunities for discovery in many places
and the latitude to apply their discoveries in new and different
situations. The classroom vignettes describe what a typical
classroom might look like on a typical day with a great deal
of activity and significant learning taking place.
A
study of the Holocaust leads to a study of human behavior,
examining what it means to be a respectful, caring, humane
individual. Examining victim, bystander, perpetrator and rescuer
behaviors lends itself to a study of how the lessons of the
Holocaust infuse studies of character education and continued
incidents of man's inhumanity to man. It is our hope that
we will create a more humane world, filled with future generations
of educated and critical thinking human beings.
Please
join us in our quest to teach about the Holocaust and other
genocides so that someday we're able to really say, "Never
Again".
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