A Mindful Classroom: Establishing A Safe Space for Sensitive Topics

Many of us have seen the importance of mindfulness in our classrooms and personal lives. Being present and aware are integral to truly absorbing what is around you. How mindful are we of exactly what is around us in the classroom? The physical space we build for our students is often an afterthought to efficiency and more intangible metrics of behaviour and dynamics. This year, I made it my goal to be mindful of the materials within my classroom and how well they represent the values I hope we exercise within these walls.

Topics: Art, Student Work, Indigenous History, Social and Emotional Learning, Middle School, Culturally Responsive and Relevant Pedagogy, facing history pedagogy, Treaty, Facing Canada, cross curricular teaching and learning

Join us on Monday, October 15, 3:30 - 4:15pm EST for a conversation with Facing History and Ourselves Program Associate Jasmine Wong about creating engaging curriculum based History, Anthropology/Sociology/Psychology, and Genocide Studies projects.

Topics: project, Middle School, Social Studies, culminating

 

On January 27 - the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau - the United Nations General Assembly and its member states commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day.   On this day, (indeed every day) we remember the victims of the Holocaust and remind ourselves of the importance of teaching and learning about the Holocaust for the prevention of future genocides.   Here are few blog posts that highlight a variety of approaches to teaching this important history.  We hope these will inspire and assist you as you prepare for this day of remembrance and learning.

Topics: Holocaust, Holocaust Education, Middle School, Holocaust and Human Behaviour, Inquiry, Grade 10 History, HSB, CHC, Anne Frank, international holocaust remembrance day

As a middle school educator, I often find myself in the position of being unable to explore really rich resources with my class due to mature content. Several years ago I purchased 5 sets of the graphic novel MAUS, hoping to one day use it as an option for book talks.

Topics: Books, Antisemitism, Choosing to Participate, Facing History Resources, Holocaust, History, Canada, Holocaust Education, current events, Middle School, genocide, Lesson Ideas, Holocaust and Human Behaviour

In 2015, Dr. Rob Simon, Associate Professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (OISE), and students from his teacher education course partnered with Sarah Evis, a teacher from Delta Senior Alternative School in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), and her grade 8 students, to study Art Spiegelman’s popular intergenerational Holocaust survivor memoir and graphic novel, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale.

Topics: Art, Books, Antisemitism, Choosing to Participate, Holocaust, Facing History and Ourselves, Innovative Classrooms, Holocaust Education, Middle School, Strategies, Culturally Responsive and Relevant Pedagogy, Night, genocide, Lesson Ideas, big paper, Inside a Genocide Classroom, Social Justice, Personal history

Every year we ask our students to set goals. We teach students what it means to set reasonable or attainable goals. As teachers, we are also asked to consider “Big” questions, over-arching concepts that will guide our year and focus our teaching.

Topics: Middle School, Lesson Ideas

Bullying. Ostracism. Peer pressure. Exclusion. Most teachers have faced these destructive forces at one point or another and struggled with how to address these issues in the classroom. This is how Facing History and Ourselves helped prepare me for confronting these issues in my classroom.

Topics: Safe Schools, Bullying, Middle School, Strategies, Lesson Ideas

Early in my teaching career I came across Voltaire's aphorism, which states, “perfect is the enemy of good.”^[1] As my fifth year as a middle school teacher, and my first year as a Facing History teacher comes to a close, I developed a new appreciation for this message.

Ten months ago, shortly after participating in the Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behaviour seminar, I wrote a blog post detailing my plans for my first year as a Facing History and Ourselves teacher. I strongly believe in the power that the Facing History and Ourselves curriculum offers students, and I wanted to make sure I lived up to what it meant to be a Facing History teacher. During the year, I found myself chasing the “perfect” lessons, which I hoped would chain together to create the “perfect” unit, and the “perfect” year. Here is what I have learned since then.

Topics: Identity, Holocaust Education, Middle School, Strategies, Lesson Ideas

Earlier in May, Facing History and Ourselves announced the 2015 winners of our annual Margot Stern Strom Innovation Grants. Facing History selected nine projects, all of which focus on collaborative learning, and were selected from a pool of international applications for their potential to inspire students to make a difference.

Topics: Facing History Together, Canada, Innovative Classrooms, Margot Stern Strom Innovation Grants, Memorial, Middle School

Remembrance is an act of humanity and it is about humanity. At Facing History and Ourselves, we often ask ourselves, How do we help students (and ourselves) to remember more than names, dates, and battles? How do we help students to connect to the humanity: the people behind the names, the lives, ideas, and cultures lost, and the legacies that extend beyond the signing of a treaty that signals the end of war?

Topics: Facing History Together, Facing History and Ourselves, History, Canada, Memorial, Middle School, Lesson Ideas, Literature