MTF Spotlight – Sandy Renken

MTF Spotlight

“When survivors ask you to tell their stories to students, to pass on their lessons, you feel a sense of responsibility to do so. It takes on a personal meaning that goes beyond the classroom.”
-Sandy Renken

“Passionate, humble, and dedicated. She is a gifted educator who is making a real impact on both her students and her community,”  are the words Kristin Thompson chose to use when describing Sandy Renken, MTF Class of 2006.  Sandy’s teaching career began in 1994 at Freeman Public Schools, in the small town of Adams, Nebraska (population 400) and she is still at Freeman to this day. Her teaching schedule consists of American History and a semester-long Holocaust class, which she developed; she is also the technology coordinator for the entire school district. Sandy’s interest for the Holocaust began when she had a six-week WWII course in high school, which was rare for the 1980s. It wasn’t until 2001 that she delved into the world of Holocaust education more deeply and saw a flier about the Belfer Conference hosted at the USHMM. She ended up attending Belfer I in 2002, which was also her first time in Washington D.C. and she had a truly eye-opening and wonderful experience. Upon completing Belfer I, an idea was brewing to start a semester-long Holocaust course at her school but she knew she needed new ideas, trainings, and materials. Sandy stated, “What better place to gather resources than at the Museum?” She then went to Belfer II in 2004 and remembers the MTFs who presented to her at the conference and thought, “I want to do this.” Sandy admired the presenters and knew she could rely on them for advice and guidance. In 2006 Sandy was selected as a Museum Teacher Fellow and her life as an educator was forever changed.

Upon being selected as an MTF, Sandy was one of the founding members of the Nebraska Holocaust Education Consortium (http://www.ihene.org/). This consortium was started in 2006 and helps organize annual conferences for pre-service and in-service teachers in Nebraska. Sandy continues to be active in the consortium and also with the USHMM. In the summer of 2016 Sandy went to the MTF 20th Anniversary Event and saw this as an opportunity to gain more knowledge from the Museum. She was excited to hear about the up and coming exhibit, Americans and the Holocaust. Sandy realizes the Museum changes and evolves through the years and to see things from the staff and be kept up-to-date with new Museum initiatives was a real treat.

Back in her classroom in Nebraska, Sandy wants her students to know that at the end of the day,  “It’s all about how they treat people. Just be a decent person. If nothing else, it makes them think: is this respectful, is this appropriate?” The culture of her classroom changes from the beginning of the school year to the end. “Students who wouldn’t normally associate with one another,  are all of a sudden talking and working together.” She learned the focus of each lesson should be centered on student outcomes. Sandy carries this experience with her today in her lessons–always keep the focus on the students. Every November Sandy takes a group of students who are enrolled in her Holocaust class to the Museum in Washington, D.C. Through her interest in the Holocaust, she has been fortunate to meet numerous survivors and has been able to bring them to her community to speak. She even met a survivor of the Armenian genocide at her local small-town nursing home. Sandy was shocked to learn there was a survivor of the Armenian genocide in Adams, Nebraska! She built a strong bond with this man and she will never forget him or his message to Sandy–impart my story onto your students. Sandy mentioned, “When survivors ask you to tell their stories to students, to pass on their lessons, you feel a sense of responsibility to do so. It takes on a personal meaning that goes beyond the classroom.”

MTF Spotlight – Kelly Watson

MTF Spotlight
USHMM MTF, EIHR International Project Coordinator, USC Shoah Foundation Master Teacher

Q: If you could travel by luxury train across any one of the seven continents, which one would you most like to see by rail?
A: Maybe because of loving Agatha Christie, I would choose an Orient Express-like train through Europe. But I also want to explore India and China, so maybe by train?

Q: What made you decide to become a Museum Teacher Fellow?
A: Easy: A copy of Night. My department chair insisted we teach this “novel,” even though I had very little historical background. I watched the mini-series Holocaust as a kid in 7th grade, but that was all I knew. My first few years teaching about the Holocaust were fairly terrible without solid context in history. I needed to educate myself, so I attended the Belfer Conference in 1998; this was the first time I traveled by myself…the first time on a plane alone! From there I was so inspired to continue to teach about the Holocaust, even working with a group of students after school to create an art project for a traveling Anne Frank exhibition that was coming here to the Indianapolis Children’s Museum. That same year I attended the English teachers’ national convention and USHMM had a booth. The late Dan Napolitano was at that table. When I told him I was at Belfer in ‘98 and had just created this Anne Frank art project with my students, he said, “You need to apply for the Fellowship.” I can still remember every detail of this conversation, down to the suit he wore and the brochure he gave me. Dan was the reason I applied and was accepted for the Fellowship.

Q: Why start your own project (Educators Institute of Human Rights) with other Museum Teacher Fellows?
A: I originally was not a member of the EIHR, just a few years ago I was invited to  assist them with social media and their website. Originally I thought I might do work in Rwanda. However, Mark Gudgel, the director at the time and co-founder of the EIHR, posed the question for all of us: What would we like to do? Where would we like to go next? What can we do together?

So two years ago I blindly emailed the Documentation Center of Cambodia, introducing myself and the EIHR. Youk Chhang, the Director of DC-Cam, quickly replied and put me in contact with Christopher Dearing, an American who had co-written their textbook on the history of Democratic Kampuchea and who creates their teacher training communes.  I didn’t have any personal connection with Cambodia at the time;  it wasn’t a place I had studied in detail other than as a comparative genocide to the Holocaust. I knew about the killing fields, but that was about the end of my knowledge. But I knew that the DC-Cam was instrumental in providing documentation for the ECCC trials and had more than a 15-year history of training teachers on how to teach about their own genocide, and that we would be ideal partners with their work.

Two years later this past October I was able to travel to Cambodia and present at a teacher commune in Battambang and to tour and meet the DC-Cam staff. This is just the beginning of our work together hopefully as one day we hope teachers from different areas of conflict can travel and work with one another in different regions (Rwanda, Bosnia, and Cambodia currently). We want the teachers in Cambodia, for example, to know as teachers (and in some cases survivors of genocide) teaching some of the grandchildren who might have been Khmer Rouge that they are not alone in this world. Eventually, we would love to see this teacher exchange program.

Kelly at the Royal Palace in Phnom Peng, Cambodia

Q: Human rights seem evident, why are they so for you? How would you articulate?
A: The only way to bring change is through education. People can truly change through education. Gathering people together and sharing stories is a great way to combat hate and genocide.

Q: Any person you admire? Why?
A: I regret never hearing and seeing Elie Wiesel. He was in Ohio on a school night just three hours away, and I will always deeply regret not making that trip to go see him. I also have great admiration for Samantha Power. Her voice. She has a way of making people aware even if it’s uncomfortable for them. And I admire so many teachers I meet. It reminds me how important it is to talk about issues relevant in our own areas. I’m constantly meeting people around the world that influence me and dare me to be better. But besides my parents, the first person I truly admired was my third grade teacher. Because she was a black woman teaching in an entirely white elementary school in the late 70’s, it would have been easy for her to try not to challenge the curriculum, but that was not who Miss Sheila Lapsley was. We created biographies about influential African Americans. She invited us to attend her church and to challenge prejudice around us. She taught me to see others as equals and to celebrate our differences. She was the first person outside of my family I admired. But I haven’t yet met the last person I admire.

Q: Yehuda Amichai, interviewed by “The Paris Review” in 1992 and a survivor of the Holocaust, got asked the following question: Were you an artistic child?
A: Yes, and I continue to be. I’m a musician, I work outdoor concerts as my summer job,  and I have a great admiration for theatre. I was a jazz saxophone player throughout high school and all four years of my undergrad at Ball State University. I thought I was going to be a band director, but I knew that while I loved playing, I did not love the administration work of a band director. The arts are very much a part of me. I can only draw stick figures, but I seek our art museums anytime I travel, especially modern art galleries. When I was in Cambodia, I walked with staff members through many winding neighborhood streets in Battambang to find a small house studio. Art and travel are intertwined for me.

In the classroom I use art to help my students express how they feel along with writing. One of my favorite projects is having my advanced students create “stained glass” pieces to represent the themes in Romeo and Juliet.

Q: When you travel, what’s on your device?
A: The National, an Indie rock band out of Cincinnati, Ohio, has always been my obsession band and the best live performance, besides the Foo Fighters, I have seen; Ryan Adams, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Death Cab for Cutie, Sufjan Stevens, and the soundtrack to Hamilton.

Links for further information:
Educators Institute of Human Rights
www.eihr.org
http://www.eihr.org/news/2016/7/23/kelly-watson-educational-program-coordinator-accepts-invitation-to-present-in-cambodia

Documentation Center of Cambodia
http://www.dccam.org/

Holocaust TV Mini-Series
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077025/

The Paris Review
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2095/yehuda-amichai-the-art-of-poetry-no-44-yehuda-amichai

Samantha Power
https://twitter.com/ambassadorpower

USC Shoah Foundation
https://Sfi.usc.edu

MTF Spotlight – Patricia Hannon

MTF Spotlight
Featured Image:  MTF Patricia Hannon hosts teacher professional development conference in Courtroom 600, Nuremberg;  site of Nuremberg Military Tribunals.  Ben Ferencz, lead prosecutor, joined  them electronically for Q&A session!

Museum Teacher Fellow, Patricia Hannon, shares her thoughts on leading teachers to historical sites and new pedagogical insights.

Leave it to Patricia Hannon to organize conferences at historical sites with teachers when in Europe. A Museum Teacher Fellow (class 2015-2016), a teacher for the Department of Defense Dependents Schools (DoDDS), and Human and Civil Rights Coordinator for the Federal Education Association Europe; Patricia has done just that over the past year.

There has never been a more important time than now to teach and share the history of the Holocaust, according to Patricia. For the first time ever, 38 DoDDS teachers joined her last February at Nuremberg for a unique two-day conference. The central focus was exploring Holocaust pedagogy, utilizing local historical sites and host-nation experts. The conference was such a success that a follow-up already took place last fall at yet another historical site. This time the venue was the infamous Kehlsteinhaus, (the Eagle’s Nest) Hitler’s mountain retreat.

View from the Berghof

Private tour of the bunker at Berchtesgaden

For Patricia Hannon the conferences represent a new era of cooperation between U.S. and German scholars; forging new host-nation partnerships to the further delight of educators who are afforded this unique opportunity. Although DoDEA (Department of Defense Education Activity) has had a presence in Germany for 60+ years, they have never worked formally with host-nation sites or scholars in the field of Holocaust education. Patricia stated, “The decision to pursue these partnerships at authentic sites is directly related to the MTF training I received  at the USHMM from Kristin Thompson and Laurie Schaeffer.  The USHMM training that I received emboldened me to pursue these partnerships, and thankfully, the host-nation organizations and sites were quite welcoming.”

The approach for the conferences is to go beyond the ‘traditional’ perpetrator/victim narratives of the past. For Patricia it is necessary to proceed together to study both historical and contemporary human rights. There is absolutely no replacement for on-site learning and the authenticity can lead to profound connections. Furthermore, by receiving training from host-nation Holocaust scholars, Patricia and her team are opening themselves to this unique pedagogy and point of view. At the Nuremberg conference, they compared mandated Holocaust curricula in both the US and Germany. The results were surprising and enlightening. When considering sites and people with whom to work, the paramount importance is replicability with students. Patricia commented, “We want teachers to go back to their classrooms and consider the site for their students. Ultimately, I see my job as making these sites and scholars more accessible for the next generation of American teachers and students.

Organizing a workshop is a joint-venture. The conferences Patricia has organized are sponsored by the Human and Civil Rights Division of the Federal Education Association (FEA). They are open to FEA members, non-members, and their guests. “Most certainly, any fellow MTF is welcome as my personal guest! Next up is a conference tentatively scheduled to be held in Munich during the Spring of 2018,” Patricia noted. In the future Patricia would love to further partnerships to help design trips to authentic sites for students outside of DoDDS as well.  Wouldn’t that be something?

Facilitating conference at Obersalzberg (“Eagle’s Nest”)

Guided tour by museum director

Artifacts

Further reading/resources:
http://feaonline.org/passport/communication/updates/europe/11-9-16.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Defense_Dependents_Schools
https://www.ashland.edu/founders/node/58731
http://www.kehlsteinhaus.de/en/index.php
http://www.memorium-nuremberg.de/exhibition/visitor-information.html

MTF Spotlight – James Gang

MTF Spotlight

“To teach is to inspire.” This maxim is often applied to educators as it pertains to their influence on students, and rightfully so. However, a select few educators, through their actions and efforts, inspire and impact not only students, but also other teachers and the public alike. James Gang is one of those select few.

James Gang is a social studies teacher at Hamburg High School near Buffalo, NY and a participant in a multitude of Holocaust-related teacher institutes and workshops including the Museum’s Belfer National Conference and Museum Teacher Fellowship. Beyond creating and teaching a class entitled Holocaust and Genocide Studies at his school, James has taken great strides in becoming an active participant in documenting the stories of local Holocaust survivors as well as becoming an advocate for, and educator of, assistance to modern humanitarian issues.

In the past few years, James has been tireless in his efforts for Holocaust and genocide education. He holds a leadership position at the Summer Institute for Human Rights and Genocide Studies, which is designed to provide students with the opportunity to hear human rights experts, historians, and advocates as well as take part in activities to inspire students to engage in their communities to have a positive impact on the world in which they live. He also has involved students at his school in raising awareness through the creation of Students for Humanity. This organization has participated in a wide array of assistance efforts locally through volunteering at soup kitchens and homeless shelters and with global efforts by working with other organizations to helping settle refugee families in Buffalo. This success led to the growth of student participation and led to larger projects, even raising enough money to pay for the construction of a school in Haiti. James saw his efforts building to a greater purpose, as he states, “Everyone one was getting it… there is no ‘Us and Them,’ only an ‘Us’ and we need to help each other.” As James continued his work, the Syrian refugee crisis exploded and his efforts, and those of his student group, directed their attention to this new cause. They began working with Help4Refugees and the student club raised enough money to fund one prefabbed caravan for the Zatarri refugee camp in Jordan to protect two Syrian refugee families from the bitter cold winter. They also joined forces with the students from the Summer Institute for Human Rights and Genocide Studies to raise funds for a second caravan later that same year. He and his students were making a difference and their impact was being felt in their community and the world at large.

Remarkably, in addition to his teaching load and leadership of Students for Humanity, James found time to work for the Holocaust Resource Center of Buffalo and now is a leader of the New Generation Initiative of the center. In his work for the center James records the testimonies of local Holocaust survivors and edits them to an appropriate length and content for classroom use. James sees this work as particularly rewarding, “I think many of us tend to put survivors on a pedestal, I’m not saying they don’t belong there, but by doing this job, I get to see all of the bumps and bruises, I get to see that they are human, just like you and me, they just happened to live through and survive extraordinary times.” Thus, James is working to effect change both in the present and the future, through education about the past and preservation of testimony for the future.

In reflecting on James’ contributions, Andrew Beiter, education director at the Holocaust Resource Center of Buffalo remarked, “What makes Jim Gang’s Holocaust education classes so unique is that he take the material from his students heads, to their hearts, to ultimately their hands, getting them involved in a myriad of ways that help tighten the social fabric of their community…He is a gift to our community and someone that I can always count on to set an example for all of us.”

James continues to feel, and more importantly his work reflects, the impact of the profound experience provided by the Museum: “Learn from this. Realize what gift we have been given and make something happen. Realize the potential that exists inside each one of us. Keep in touch with each other and use each other. Keep working, keep teaching, keep inspiring, keep learning. Be the change!” Without a doubt, he is the embodiment of his own words.

We could all do well to be inspired by James Gang and his continued efforts to make a difference in his classroom and his community, both in upstate New York and around the world.

Links to the key resources and sites mentioned in the article are below:
Summer Institute for Human Rights and Genocide Studies: http://www.summerinstituteofbuffalo.org/

Help 4 Refugees:
http://www.help4refugees.org/

Holocaust Resource Center of Buffalo:
http://www.hrcbuffalo.org/#home

New Generation Initiative:
http://www.hrcbuffalo.org/new-generation-initiative/