For Educators

Audience: Middle and high school social studies and ELA educators

Format: 1-hour professional development session; often part of professional learning days

Style: Synchronous; in-person or digital

Description: This program offers a preliminary exploration of two pedagogical tools that help teachers prepare themselves to cover the challenging topic of the Holocaust in their classrooms. The first tool is a rationale writing exercise that deepens educators’ understanding of their reasons and approaches to teaching this traumatic history. The second tool is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Guidelines for Teaching about the Holocaust. We explore the guidelines intuitively, focusing on the principles which teachers self-identify as germane to their work, or difficult to implement in their classroom. For each guideline, we offer practical tips on how to translate the concept into action in real-time when contending with students’ ideas, experiences, and emotions in the delicate learning space around freighted histories.