Recommended for Grades 4-8 Teachers.

Develop your students’ empathy with The Heart from Auschwitz pedagogical project and discover the incredible story of an exceptional artefact on display at the Montreal Holocaust Museum. On the day of her 20th birthday, while she was a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp, Fania received a heart-shaped booklet. Another young woman, Zlatka, had risked her life to make her a birthday present. The Heart from Auschwitz activity studies the historical context in which the Heart was created while focusing on spiritual resistance during the Holocaust. This in-class project concludes the study of the Holocaust on a positive note as students are invited to make their own version of the heart and to give it to someone in need of an affectionate gesture.

Monique MacLeod is Head of Education at the Montreal Holocaust Museum. She holds an M. Ed. from York University and has developed educational programming for museums and community organizations for the past 10 years.

Recommended for Grades 4-8 Teachers.

Teachers will learn how to use age-appropriate animation to teach to children about the Holocaust, including historical concepts. We will break down the material and explain effective approaches as well as the limits of animations. Gain confidence in teaching this difficult subject to younger grades.

In 2007, Yoni Berrous began working as a guide for students and Israeli security personnel at Yad Vashem. He has also worked as the Head of the European Jewish Programming in the International School for Holocaust Studies. He is currently responsible at Yad Vashem for developing Holocaust training for educators from Canada.

Recommended for Grades 4-12 Teachers.

The Holocaust arose out of hatred and racism. It was fueled by the power of words and propaganda. We learn from the Holocaust how important words are by studying Nazi Germany and the escalation from words to violence to genocide. How can we apply these lessons to modern day issues to ensure justice and human dignity for people of all religions and races?

Sheryl holds a law degree from Harvard Law School and a BA in History from SUNY-Binghamton, and a Certificate in Genocide Studies from Stockton University. Currently, she is the Program Director for Echoes & Reflections at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, Israel.

Recommended for Grades 4-8 Teachers.

Why it is so important to teach Holocaust history? Hear about Kathy's own background as a child of survivors. She will present the many principles to keep in mind when working with this sensitive material in the classroom and will provide lists of websites for students and teachers to use. There will be an opportunity to expand the conversation in this interactive session, moving from the Holocaust to a study of other genocides. We encourage questions and discussion.

Kathy has written 30 books focusing on the Holocaust. A winner of the Jewish book Award (Canada and the U.S.), and the Yad Vashem Award for Holocaust Literature (Israel), Kathy has written unforgettable stories inspired by real events.

Recommended for Grades 9-12 Teachers.
 

Discover how this play came to be and hear about the historical structure of the play, the wide range of Holocaust topics covered in the chronology of the play, and the survivors and saviors featured in this totally nonfiction play. Teachers gain an understanding of how to use segments or the entire play for students to do readings in class and then have discussions based on the additional resources.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is a Los Angeles-based playwright, screenwriter and book author. She is the founder of the free nonfiction Holocaust theater project www.ThinEdgeOfTheWedge.com and the co-host of the antisemitism podcast NEVER AGAIN IS NOW available on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts -- www.millermosaicllc.com/podcast-never-again-is-now/

Recommended for Grades 4-8 Teachers.

During this session, educators will recognize the value of primary source audio-visual testimony of survivors and witnesses of genocide through a guided exploration of multimedia resources available on USC Shoah Foundation’s award-winning educational platform, IWitness. Educators will learn effective strategies that prepare them to integrate testimony in their classrooms to support their approach to Holocaust and genocide education. By the end of this session, educators will discover testimony-based resources in IWitness that develop students’ historical literacy, social-emotional capacities and civic responsibility in society.

Mary Anna Noveck is a passionate educator with extensive knowledge of research-based practices in the field of education pedagogy at the kindergarten - university level. Mary Anna earned her B.A. in Communications from Stephens College, her M.Ed. from the University of California, Los Angeles, and her Global Executive Ed.D. from USC.

Recommended for Grades 4-12 Teachers.

Dr. Kori Street, Finci-Viterbi Interim Executive Director, has spent a decade leading the Institute’s academic, education and administration initiatives which reach scholars, educators and students in 80 countries. Starting in 2011, Dr. Street served as Director of Education, overseeing the development and exponential growth of IWitness, USC Shoah Foundation’s no-cost educational website. Under their direction, the educational platform launched at the United Nations, secured an institutional partnership with Discovery Education, and now reaches tens of millions of educators and students worldwide. After completing a Master’s in the History of Education and Gender/Feminism at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto, Dr. Street received their PhD in history from the University of Victoria in 2001. Dr. Street currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Association of Holocaust Organizations and as a member of the Education Working Group of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

Recommended for Grades 4-8 + Grades 9-12 Teachers.

In this session, educators will have the opportunity to reflect on their current Holocaust-specific teaching practices by discovering The Azrieli Foundation’s newest teacher resource – The First Step. We will walk through this interactive resource, highlighting how the different sections can help teachers best prepare themselves prior to teaching about the Holocaust. After completing The First Step, teachers will have a working definition of the Holocaust, a clear rationale statement, credible sources for information gathering and a sense of the current best practices (the Do’s and Don’t’s) in Holocaust education. Teachers will also have an opportunity to view our wide range of free educational offerings (memoirs, education programs and activities, digital resources, teacher training and workshops etc.)

Michelle Sadowski is an educator with over 18 years of experience. As the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, Michelle is passionate about Holocaust education. As the educator for the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program, she works to create impactful educational materials that highlight the memoirs written by Canadian Holocaust survivors.

Recommended for Grades 4-12 Teachers.

Gain a comprehensive overview of the research archive and a robust exploration on how educators can utilize it in their
classrooms.

Ellen Resnek: CWB Educational Programs and Outreach Manager. She has been an educator for over 20 years, teaching in both Massachusetts and Vermont before relocating to Pennsylvania. She received her Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of Massachusetts in 1988 and holds 2 Masters Degrees in Education from Wilkes University.

Dr. Mary Johnson from Stockton University’s Master of Arts in Holocaust and Genocide program dedicated teacher and scholar of history. Dr. Johnson teaches as an adjunct on the college/university level and trains teachers from middle and high school backgrounds. She also has led study tours in Poland and Germany.

Recommended for Grades 9-12 Teachers.

What is said, and what is left unsaid in the statement, "But I Live"? What does this title suggest about the dual possibilities of trauma awareness in Holocaust education practice and the presentation of lasting trauma and survival after the Holocaust through the graphic narrative, "But I Live", by Holocaust survivor Emmie Arbel and artist/author Barbara Yelin. This new text is part of Narrative Art and Visual Storytelling in History and Human Rights Education. Dr.

Andrea Webb spent a decade as a classroom teacher and dept. head before returning to teacher education. Her research interests lie in Threshold Concepts, Teaching and Learning, & Social Studies Teacher Education. Andrea is part of a multinational SSHRC-funded project, Narrative Art & Visual Storytelling in Holocaust and Human Rights Education.

Jasmine Wong is an Associate Program Director with Facing History and Ourselves, where she manages programming and partnerships, lesson design and professional development for educators and curriculum coaches across Canada. She is motivated by the transformative power of teaching and learning in partnership to create a more equitable, just world.

Recommended for Grades 9-12 Teachers.

Understand the story of the Holocaust, by focusing on the Jewish and universal human spirit in its many shades, the possibility to choose – even in difficult situations, the triumph of the human spirit. The educational narrative will emphasize three main concepts: Holocaust history and remembrance, a warning from the past, inspiration towards a better future. Discover the relevance of holocaust education to this time and day, and the importance of doing so in new and innovative educational methods. Yaron Tzur has been the pedagogic director of the Ghetto Fighters' House Museum during the past 7 years, and a holocaust educator for the past 2 decades. He has a BA and MA in education and history.

Recommended for Grades 9-12 Teachers.

Combining resources from the USC Shoah Foundation and the Azrieli Foundation, teachers will be introduced to several educational material that will help them create an interactive Holocaust Unit. Teachers will learn how to build a complete unit of study base on best practises in Holocaust education. Using Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter as an example, our session will give teachers options to add interactive elements to their unit; such as the use of Dimension in testimony (an interactive biography that engages students in a simulated conversation with a survivor), Re:Collection (the digital resource that uses video, pictures, artefacts and memoirs excerpts) and a survivor-author memoir. By the end of this session, teachers will be given various unique options on how to enhance their Holocaust unit with interactive first-hand account resources.

Marc-Olivier Cloutier is the Education Initiatives Manager at the Azrieli Foundation’s Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program. In his current position, Marc-Olivier connects teachers and students across Canada with Holocaust education resources and organizes conferences in Canada to support scholarly engagement.

Lesly Culp is USC Shoah Foundation’s Acting Director of Education and Outreach. In her role, she oversees IWitness, the Institute’s educational website and leads the strategic plan for content, outreach and professional development to make audiovisual testimonies and interactive biographies of survivors and witnesses of genocide and mass atrocity accessible to educators and students worldwide.

Recommended for Grades 9-12 Teachers.

Cinema can be a powerful learning tool but most movies about the Holocaust were not made to educate students and are not appropriate teaching tools. Gain an understanding of the difficulties of this tool and how to use cinema effectively and appropriately to teach high school students about Holocaust themes.

In 2007, Yoni Berrous began working as a guide for students and Israeli security personnel at Yad Vashem. He has also worked as the Head of the European Jewish Programming in the International School for Holocaust Studies. He is currently responsible at Yad Vashem for developing Holocaust training for educators from Canada.