This semester Facing History students from across the greater Toronto area have been busy learning the ins and outs of digital storytelling - writing, editing, interviewing, and developing media skills in order to produce on social justice-oriented radio segments that will broadcast on Radio Regent. The youth-led audio documentaries will explore critical topics such as identity, bystander behaviour, religion, upstanders in history and today, and standing up for others.
Topics: Art, Events, EdTech, Innovative Classrooms, Media Skills, Technology, Radiozilla
This April, students at the Thomas Street Middle School (TSMS) in Peel took a stand against bullying and homophobia and what they did will amaze you. Watch this video then read on to learn more:
Topics: Choosing to Participate, current events, Middle School, Social Justice
A couple of weeks ago, this anti-immigration flyer circulated around Brampton, Ontario.
Topics: Choosing to Participate, Human Rights, Identity, Innovative Classrooms, current events, We and They, In the news, CHG, Social Justice
Today Facing History announced the recipients of its annual Margot Stern Strom Innovation Awards, which grew out of a teaching award established in 2006 to recognize Facing History-trained educators who are thinking outside-the-box to transform schools and impact student learning.
This year, we awarded over $42,200 to fund 19 classroom projects around the world that focus on technological innovation and collaborative learning, including one of our own educators in Canada!
Topics: Art, Identity, Innovative Classrooms, CHG
This week, our office director Leora, along with several other Facing History staff and board members, are traveling in Poland as part of a learning trip. Over the course of nine days, they are exploring questions about history, memory, and legacy that are at the core of our work. With the help of Polish and Jewish scholars, witnesses to history, community activists, politicians and journalists, as well as organizations that have worked with Facing History throughout the past 25 years, they will be challenged to think in new ways as we confront the past and struggle with questions about the present and future. On Monday, Leora and the group visited the Treblinka extermination camp. Read her thoughts here:
Topics: Antisemitism, Facing History Resources, Holocaust, History, Museum Studies, Holocaust Education, Memorial, Personal history
I wear a pendant around my neck. It’s about the size of a quarter and it has the silhouette of a solitary candle carved out of the middle. Written around the candle are the words Remember and Never Again. It’s a simple, yet powerful design. A student, noticing this, asked me why I often wore it and what it meant. Instead of answering the question directly, I turned it back to her. I told her that a friend of mine had bought it for me at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. and I asked her why we study the Holocaust. Why do we need to remember?
Topics: Art, Facing History Resources, History, Memorial, Strategies, Genocide and Crimes Against Humanities Course, Lesson Ideas, CHG
Later this week, South Africa will celebrate 20 years of democracy – on April 27, 1994, citizens of the country voted alongside one another in the first post-apartheid elections. The case study of South Africa is an important one to introduce students to ideas about global citizenship, while teaching about the formation and strategies of the anti-apartheid movement. Check out the five resources below to help plan a lesson that explore issues of human rights and this important moment in South African history in your classroom:
Topics: Choosing to Participate, Human Rights, Facing History Resources, Identity, History, Memorial, current events, We and They, In the news, Social Justice
“Sir, it keeps happening again and again. We don’t learn. I don’t think we’re going to get better. There doesn’t seem to be much hope.”
Three years ago a grade 12 student said this to me in my West and the World class. Every so often it echoes in my head. She was doing a research paper on Rwanda and the United Nations, and had done a significant amount of reading on the topic and she was passionately upset about how the world had allowed the Rwandan Genocide to happen.
Topics: Innovative Classrooms, genocide, Genocide and Crimes Against Humanities Course, Lesson Ideas, CHG, Inside a Genocide Classroom, Social Justice, reflection
With any new course, teachers will often ask themselves, “Where do I begin?” This is an even more daunting question when dealing with such a difficult subject as genocide. In my preparation for teaching the Grade 11 Genocide and Crimes Against Humanities course at Louise Arbour Secondary School, I asked myself, “How can the students and I relate to situations that are so extreme and beyond most of our experiences?”
Topics: Identity, milgram, We and They, Strategies, Genocide and Crimes Against Humanities Course, Inside a Genocide Classroom
Here at Facing History and Ourselves, we are always reading! As the 8th Commandment of teaching Genocide says "Thou shalt read in order to understand how much more you need to read." As you readjust to being back from March Break feeling wonderfully refreshed, or are restlessly waiting for spring to arrive, and looking for something to pick up for a good read, here are some options, from us to you!
Topics: Books, Professional Development, Events, History, current events, We and They, genocide, In the news
