Preface

 

I plan to spend around 10 weeks on the Holocaust.  Not everyone has that luxury of time; ideally, I’d prefer to spend the entire 18-week semester but that was not possible when the course was written.  At that time, my principal and myself decided that we would have a better chance of pushing a class through our school board’s curriculum committee that included social injustices besides the Holocaust.

 

As you click on the hyperlinks at the left, you will be taken to a "cover page"; a basic introduction to the topic.  I have formatted the page to include a quote from my classes, the historical context of the material and rationale to teach, major topics that are covered, reflections based on my delivery of the material to high school students, and selected resources.

 

The material presented, including most of the notes, are generally although not exclusively from the “Encountering the Holocaust” course I took in the summer of 2001 with Dr. Elliot Lefkovitz of Spertus College in Chicago, Illinois.  Henceforth, I will include my notes from his curriculum in blue type, as well as student responses and class discussion within the body of notes, set off in italics (my comments and participation in dialogue will appear in regular type in black).  In many cases, this may involve the high points of what turned into a lengthy conversation.  I will include comments and questions from both of the sections I taught in the fall of 2002.  In the future this material may be revised as the course evolves.

 

We also use as a text a resource that I found on the Internet called The Holocaust – A Guide For Teachers authored by Gary Grobman.  It can be found at

 

http://www.remember.org/guide/

 

It generally coincides nicely with the notes I present.

 

To give the reader an idea of the demographics from which this web presentation was created, the following statistics may prove helpful:

 

   The instructor is a white male Protestant.

 

   There were 57 students total:

   22 were female

   35 were male

   1 is Jewish

   1 is biracial

   Breakdown by academic standing was –

   4 sophomores

   5 juniors

   48 seniors

Back to The Holocaust:  Teaching the Shoah to High School Students