Promoting Global Understanding: An Interview with Facing History Educators in Russia and America

The Margot Stern Strom Teaching Award has had a lasting legacy for two teachers– one in Santa Monica, CA, the other in Russia. In 2007, Meredith Louria, who teaches Facing History in both her AP English course and yearlong Facing History seminar at Santa Monica High School, received a Teaching Award to travel to Russia and develop a Facing History unit with Nadya Strueva, an English teacher at a school in Voronezh near Moscow.

For the last two years, Meredith and Nadya have taught their courses simultaneously—bridging national boundaries and great distances so their students can learn more about each other’s perspectives and experiences. Using the Facing History framework to explore the history of the Cold War—a time of great tension between the U.S. and former Soviet Union—the classes have offered students a deeper understanding of how historical and contemporary forces affect people’s individual choices.

A reflection by one of the student’s sums up the goal their teachers have set for the course: “We are dedicated to developing a better understanding of each other's identity, culture, history, arts, and values. Our goal is to work together to create a safer, more peaceful and healthy world for us and future generations.”

In June 2009, through a scholarship from Facing History, and financial help from Meredith, Nadya traveled to Los Angeles to attend Facing History’s seminar on the Armenian Genocide, which is based on the resource Crimes Against Humanity and Civilization: The Genocide of the Armenians. The teachers plan to incorporate this case study into their course. Facing History staff member Marti Tippens Murphy interviewed the two at the end of the week.

MARTI: Can you tell me a little bit about the experience you just had and what it was like to go through a seminar together?

NADYA: It is so hard to put all we think and feel into the lines of an email message—to find an opportunity to spend hours sitting together like this at the table and to talk to each other—is impossible to underestimate. I’m taking home a lot of methodologies to connect materials and ideas how I can implement all I’ve heard here.

MEREDITH: I’ve told Nadya a lot about Facing History but I wanted her to experience it firsthand instead of always filtered through me. I brought Holocaust and Human Behavior [Facing History’s core resource book] to Nadya and I had a lot of expertise on that. We worked together on the Cold War. Of course she has a huge expertise on the Russian side of the Cold War. This was something where neither of us had any expertise. We could come together as equals, as learners.

We fight for opportunities to bring this kind of curriculum into our classrooms. I know that I can always turn to Facing History for support, and it’s near me and it’s easily accessible. Nadya doesn’t have that community next to her. But now that she’s participated in the seminar, that’s more available to her.

MARTI: How do you plan to use what you’ve experienced at the seminar this week?

MEREDITH: I would really like to look at various genocides—not to compare them, that’s very dangerous—but to draw from them certain lessons. I feel like the students in America, for example, right now are very engaged by Darfur. They have studied the Holocaust. And that giving our students the Armenian Genocide as kind of an early example that so many other examples have similar patterns is a way to move into discussions of: “at what point do we intervene?” “What does justice afterwards look like?” So that each case study gets its due for its particulars but there’s the ability to look forward and look inside oneself.

MARTI: What has been the most surprising thing that has happened, that you’ve experienced in your partnership together?

NADYA: The surprising thing was how the stereotypes were easily broken as soon as our students made the steps toward each other, to be acquainted, to learn more about each other. How enthusiastic they were about working together.

MEREDITH: I understood the question differently. I was thinking about what surprised me about being able to work, you and I together. And what came to mind is that it’s actually difficult, politically, for me to go to Russia and for Nadya to come here. Nadya was invited to a [conference] in London and couldn’t get the visa to go, for political reasons. When I go to Russia, I have to stay a certain amount of time in a hotel. I can’t just go and live with her. And so, we think of the fall of the Soviet Union as opening everything up, but it’s not just finding the financial way of getting ourselves together, finding the technology to keep our students together and finding the curriculum. It’s actually physically difficult for me to go to Russia and for her to come here. And we’ve been able to surmount those challenges, but they’re there. And that was surprising to me. I was not prepared for that.

MARTI: But you keep doing it. So you must think it is worth the effort.

NADYA: We see what impact this joint work has on our students. Today (at the seminar) I heard a combination of words, “institutional denial.” Well, it goes so close together with stereotypes, with the way people are brought up. They see each other in the light they are taught, either at school or in families. If there is no understanding, if there is a feeling of animosity inside, it is hard to talk about peace in the world if people are not ready to accept each other. On the contrary, they are ready to deny each other. To deny, even having not seen each other at least once in their life. And I would like my students to at least once ‘see’ American students.

MEREDITH: This is about teaching dispositions. It’s about doing something more than just learning English vocabulary in Nadya’s students’ case or learning literature and history in my students’ case. It’s actually about becoming global citizens and doing so in a way that’s responsible, moral, and reflective. And that’s something that you can’t just do on printed pages. You have to do it in real time, with real people, real connections, and it’s worth the effort.

NADYA: Our work with Facing History has a great impact on my students. Facing History sent me the CD “Be the Change” (stories of young people who made a difference that are also available on Facing History’s Be the Change website) The students in turns were presenting their stories in the classroom. And then they asked, “So is there anything we can do?” All together we went to clean the river. And then they brought a lot of things and toys to take them to an orphanage. They wanted to do something. It is an impact.