City educators to bring back lessons of Holocaust
Grant-funded trip to Poland aims to improve curriculum
Five top administrators in Pittsburgh Public Schools will follow in the footsteps of a Holocaust survivor this summer in order to bring new insights back to the classroom.
The group, which will include superintendent Anthony Hamlet and a high school teacher from Pittsburgh Perry, are joining about 80 other educators and students from other districts on a nine-day trip in early July to Poland, where they will visit concentration camps and other sites related to the Holocaust before tailoring the district’s curricula based on what they learn.
The program is coordinated by Classrooms Without Borders, an affiliate of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh that aims to provide teachers across the region with resources to better teach students the lessons of the Holocaust.
“The Poland seminar is going to help the executive team come to understand what happened in pre-World War II Germany and the economic, the political and religious events that led to the Holocaust and the genocide,” said David May-Stein, the district’s chief of school performance, who will go on the trip. “Those lessons will be brought directly back to our students and our teachers.”
The Pittsburgh Public Schools board approved the trip and the
$1,500-per-person cost — which will be paid for with grant money — at its meeting last month, although the 6-2 vote sparked some controversy.
Classrooms Without Borders was founded in 2011 by longtime educator Zipora Gur, who had been organizing similar professional development opportunities for teachers for about two decades prior to that. Though affiliated with the Jewish Federation, Classrooms Without Borders has its own board of directors and does its own fundraising to help subsidize travel costs for teachers who attend the seminars, Ms. Gur said.
In addition to the Poland seminar, the group facilitates professional development trips to Israel, Spain, Greece and Germany that focus on subjects such as politics, art, science and archaeology. About 500 educators from 89 schools and districts from Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio have participated in the seminars, and Ms. Gur estimated the lessons they bring back and the other programming that CWB provides locally reach 55,000 students every year.
“It is crucial for teachers to be there and understand and use the country as a textbook,” she said.
As part of the program, participants have multiple meetings before the trip with CWB staff to discuss what they’ll be studying and what areas of their school or district’s curriculum they would like to improve or expand, Ms. Gur said. The groups that participate in the Poland seminar travel with a Holocaust survivor and visit former concentration
“... at the end of the day we really want our students to help make the world a better place, and this helps us get there.” — David May-Stein, Pittsburgh Public School's chief of school performance, who will go on the trip
camps, learn about life for Jewish Poles before and after World War II, and hear from the chief rabbi of Poland and a righteous gentile, a term used to describe a non-Jews who helped protect Jews from the Nazis.
“We found that if we really want them to learn the lessons of the Holocaust, not just the history of the Holocaust, they need to become personally connected to it,” said Melissa Haviv, CWB’s assistant director. “The point of Classrooms Without Borders is really to promote tolerance and respect for differences and to celebrate humanity so that nothing like this ever can happen again.”
But two board members voted against approving the travel, questioning whether it was the appropriate use of district resources.
Board member Moira Kaleida voted against sending district employees on the trip, arguing that the money could be spent to bolster other curricula since the district already has strong Holocaust programs. During the board meeting, she also expressed concerns that the trip, organized by a group that also arranges seminars in Israel, could thrust the district into the “geopolitical fights” in that part of the world.
“I do feel that this organization puts us on a slippery slope of not representing the true struggle of that area,” she said during the meeting, adding that Palestinian people in particular could be underrepresented.
After some criticism from the community and in response to an article published Friday in the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle, Ms Kaleida said in a statement this week that she “embraces cultural diversity and celebrates the experiences and history of all PPS students” and that she voted to approve trips for students to visit the Holocaust museum in 2016 and 2017.
“As a Pittsburgh Public school board member, my responsibility is to ensure, as best as possible, that all students are included in our curriculum including those from all cultures, religious backgrounds, and ethnicities, and that the limited resources and grant funds allocated to PPS be best utilized to accomplish this goal.”
Board member Kevin Carter also voted against approving the travel, arguing that teachers in the classroom would be better served by the seminar rather than district administrators.
But Ms. Gur said including administrators on the CWB seminars makes them more likely and more able to support the teachers who want to incorporate what they learn into their lesson plans. Since CWB was founded, she said, more administrators have been participating and more schools and districts are helping cover the costs for their teachers to attend, rather than making the teachers pay their own way.
“As an administrator, the importance of having someone in the capacity to implement curriculum to allow teachers to develop it and put it in the classroom is so critical,” said Nancy Aloi, who retired two years ago as superintendent of the Bethel Park School District and participatedin two seminars with Ms. Gur.
She first attended the Poland seminar in 2006 before Ms. Gur officially founded Classrooms Without Borders. She also traveled with the group to Israel in 2014. Both times Bethel Park teachers accompanied her, andas a result of the seminar, they made changes to readings they assigned to students, brought in speakers and artifacts to share with their classes and assigned more in-depth projects to accompany their Holocaust curriculum,Ms. Aloi said.
Mr. May-Stein said PPS hopes to continue the partnership with Classrooms Without Borders and send a group of students to Poland in summer 2019.
“The work that is being done with Classrooms Without Borders is so important to all of humanity that it’s critical to the work that we’re doing in the district as we’re preparing our student to be college, career and life ready,” he said. “And at the end of the day we really want our students to help make the world a better place, and this helps us get there.”