Educators show presentations on the future of the Holocaust curriculum.
On April 20, the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust and the Northwest Region came together to host the Holocaust Educators Conference at Watauga High School.
“Since October, the Council has organized in-person and virtual workshops to aid teachers for this school year,” said Carrie Boone, a Regional Co-director for the NC Holocaust Council, Holocaust educator, and teacher at Watauga High School.
The goal of the conference is to teach educators foundational lessons to be used in the classroom. They also wanted to dig into the roots of why teachers want to teach the Holocaust to the next generation of students.
“We know there are many teachers that feel overwhelmed when addressing this information and we wanted to offer basic support,” said Boone. “The attendees [heard] from classroom teachers on practices that have worked for us. I wanted teachers to also hear from my students (referring to students who are currently taking the Holocaust and Genocide class) on their efforts to inform the community after the hate act at the Temple of the High Country.”
Their goal for the event's attendance was to attract as many teachers and educators as possible. Event coordinators wanted to get attendance from multiple counties to spread education about the Holocaust.
“We had over 50 teachers attend from surrounding counties and some from the Triad area. We wanted to bring in any teachers that were interested in strengthening their understanding of how to teach about the Holocaust properly,” said Boone. “There were teachers representing social studies, English, art, French, and EC.”
When looking into the purpose of this conference, it’s important to acknowledge notable changes in North Carolina’s school legislation. In recent years, the North Carolinian Education Legislature has made teaching the Holocaust a required subject for students to learn. This means that almost all social studies and history teachers must gain an in-depth knowledge of the Holocaust and must learn how to teach it. This change in school policy has greatly influenced the conference.
“The NC Council on the Holocaust has always offered workshops to assist teachers, but the legislation influenced the topic,” said Boone. “We informed the teachers about the new curriculum coming out later this year that we have been working on since August. I'm hoping that after meeting with these educators they will reach out for more support.”
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