Margot Stern Strom Teaching Award: 2010 Recipients
In the spring of 2010 Facing History and Ourselves has awarded 46 educators across the globe the Margot Stern Strom Teaching Award. This year there were over 160 applicants for the awards.
The Margot Stern Strom Teaching Award is given annually to teachers who demonstrate a commitment to fostering reflective, interactive, and rigorous learning environments in their classrooms. The recipients are teachers who are implementing Facing History programs and who successfully integrate intellectual, emotional, and ethical dimensions of study into their students’ experience. The award, now given to over 150 educators since it was established in 2006 by a private donor, makes a grant available to each recipient to complete an in-depth project that leads to higher levels of student engagement and student achievement in the classroom.
Brandon Barr, an 8th grade teacher at Nightingale Elementary School in Chicago, Illinois, will enhance his World War II/Holocaust unit by drawing inspiration from the film Pigeon and readings from Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior. Students will create digital stories in which their characters choose to move from bystanders to upstanders. This project will broaden students’ thinking about opportunities to make a difference, encourage digital literacy, and provide technology resources for the school.
Laura Dias, a teacher at Orr Academy High School in Chicago, Illinois, will bring the memoir Red Scarf Girl alive for her 10th grade Modern World History students with an oral history project. After exploring the text using Facing History's study guide Teaching Red Scarf, students will travel to Chicago’s Chinatown neighborhood and interview Chinese Americans who lived through the Cultural Revolution. The project will culminate in a community and student banquet at Orr Academy where their work will be shared with school. Students’ videos will be posted online and archived for future academic use. This project will connect the students with a new culture in their city, increase their digital literacy, and link them to Facing History resources.
Michael Lindberg, a professor at Elmhurst College in Elmhurst, Illinois, who teaches Holocaust and Human Behavior to pre service teachers, will create a course that uses the Facing History framework to facilitate students' study of gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered (GLBT) identities in the United States and deepen their understanding of issues of inclusion and exclusion in America. The course will become an offering open to all students at Elmhurst College with special focus on those who major or minor in Intercultural Studies.
Tracy Andrews, a 9th – 12th grade language arts teacher at Milton-Union High School in West Milton, Ohio, will purchase various books for literature circles in her Holocaust Literature class. The goal of the project is to help students make essential connections between history, their lives and the worlds we live in through the use of literature circles to examine 20th century genocides.
Kimberly Butler, a 9th – 12th grade language arts teacher at the all-female Laurel School in Shaker Heights, Ohio, will attend a Facing History and Ourselves Race & Membership seminar, and purchase a documentary film and books to enhance her class curriculum for “From Harlem to Hip-Hop: The Cultural Anthropology of the Urban Experience in Modern America “ In addition, Kimberly will do a self directed study of scholarly publications that are central to the topics of urban studies, identity ,injustice, activism, youth culture, gender, racism, inequality and social change. Of particular note will be the focus on how notions of inclusion and exclusion have affected the thinking behavior and policies of Americans since the founding of our nation. This unique class teaches students about the themes of Choosing to Participate and how they can be agents of positive social change through studying history, music and literature as they shaped the African American dance movement.
Mary Courtwright, a sociology professor at Bryant & Stratton College in Eastlake, Ohio, will participate in a Facing History and Ourselves Holocaust and Human Behavior online seminar to bring technology into her Homan Relations class project requirements. Mary has been integrating Facing History concepts into this class. The first semester focuses on unraveling the layers of perceived differences between individuals by race, religion and socioeconomic status. They examine stereotyping, prejudice , discrimination, privilege , eugenics, as they study slavery through the Holocaust After attending the seminar, she will use the Race: Power of an Illusion DVD and Teacherweb to enhance her students ’ “More Than Meets the Eye” digital projects which require them to evaluate the changes in student attitudes of race, prejudice, privilege, and discrimination after semester-long study.
Megan Eadeh, a 9th–12th grade language arts and social studies teacher at Lakewood City Academy in Lakewood, Ohio, will purchase journals and supplies to support the creation of an in-class Facing History and Ourselves and Ourselves museum exhibit that will include student reflections on a person, event, or time period that has impacted them.
Gala Gates, a 10th–12th grade social studies teacher at John Adams High School in Cleveland, Ohio, will create a Facing History and Ourselves elective course that will be adopted by the Cleveland Metropolitan School district and offered in September 2010. The district has found that students who participate in Facing History programs are more engaged in learning, and develop greater empathy and ethical awareness. The award will allow them to purchase resource books, supplies, and technology to assist in the course’s implementation.
Meredith Changeux, a Vantage Point High School teacher in Northglenn, Colorado, will conduct a literature reading and discussion circle throughout her Civil Rights class, using commonly taught Facing History and Ourselves literature books including The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, and The Color of Water, by James McBride.
Betsey Coleman, a 9th grade language arts teacher at Colorado Academy in Denver, Colorado, will incorporate Facing History and Ourselves themes such as genocide, immigration, and legacy and memory into her class, Coming of Age in the World. To support a unit on the Cambodian Genocide, Betsey will create an anthology including of selections from memoirs such as First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers, by genocide survivor Loung Ung.
Terry Fostvedt, of Centaurus High School in Lafayette, Colorado, will deepen her Facing History and Ourselves unit with a variety of new activities, resources, and connections. Her students will read, write about, and discuss Simon Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower, which raises a profound dilemma about issues of justice and forgiveness after the Holocaust. Creating a global connection her students will develop a partnership with a school in South Africa and use Skype as a forum for rich discussions of issues of justice and democracy. Additionally, Centaurus High School has applied to become a partner school through the Darfur Dream Team's Sister Schools Program. The goals of the Darfur Dream Team program are to provide a quality education to every refugee child from Darfur; and, to develop connections between students from Darfur and the United States and promote mutual understanding
Andrew Johnson, a teacher at the New America School in Denver, Colorado, has developed lesson plans that teach the skills necessary to create oral histories and build on themes found in Facing History resources. The final product may take the form of videos posted online, a multimedia disc, or a bound book. The project will allow students, many of whom are immigrants themselves, to tell the untold stories of the contribution of immigrants to their communities.
Christine Loven-Santos, of New America School in Denver, Colorado, will teach a Facing History and Ourselves unit focusing on the destruction of democracy and Weimar Germany and the rise of the Nazis to power to set the stage for reading The Sunflower, by Simon Wiesenthal. Wiesenthal’s memoir raises profound questions about justice and forgiveness in the aftermath of the Holocaust. After reading The Sunflower, Christine will visit other Facing History schools in the Denver area to learn about restorative justice programs. This class will pilot a peer mediation/restorative justice program with the plan of eventual school-wide implementation.
Sarah Shay, a teacher at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design in Denver, Colorado, will develop art-based lesson plans for K-12 educators from existing Facing History and Ourselves curriculum resources. Her work, in conjunction with the Red Line Art Gallery artist in residence program will integrate art and historical content for students in several Denver Public Schools.
Eric Alwin, of Smoky Hill High School in Aurora, Colorado, will attend two Facing History seminars this coming summer: Choices in Little Rock and Holocaust and Human Behavior. He will then integrate the content and pedagogy modeled in the seminars into his Multi Cultural Literature Grade 9-12 curriculum for the 2010-2011 school year.
Anthony Smith, of Notre Dame RC Girls School in London, England, will hold workshops for his students about the rise of the Nazis and the Holocaust. The workshops will include speakers who are Holocaust survivors, an educator from the Jewish Museum of London, a musician specializing in Jewish music, and an art workshop. Students will stage the children's opera "Brundibar" by Hans Krasa for the community. The performance will also include readings, poems, and music about the Holocaust.
Rebecca Warren, a teacher at Skinners’ Company School for Girls in London, England, will travel to South Africa, where she will study with other Facing History and Ourselves teachers to learn more about the history of Apartheid and South Africa’s transition to democracy. Warren is also working to start an exchange between her British students and South African students who have taken Facing History through our South African partner organization Facing the Past. This will initially take the form of written exchange with the goal of a plan for British students to travel to South Africa to generate their own ideas of a global partnership.
Gail Weldon, of Western Cape Education Department in Cape Town, South Africa, is hoping to develop a Facing History and Ourselves school in South Africa. With the award she will travel to the United States to work with staff at the Facing History and Ourselves Headquarters, and visit the New Haven Academy, a school with deep infusion of the Facing History content and methodology, and the Facing History School in New York City.
Alphonse Mutagoma, a teacher at The Insight Peace Education Project (IPEP) in Gulu, Northern Uganda, will provide professional development for fellow educators in utilizing Facing History and Ourselves core materials at The IPEP. The classroom implementation phase will include facilitating classes twice a week in two pilot schools—one in the urban municipality of Gulu and one in a rural internally displaced persons camp. Many students he will work with are ex-child combatants abducted during the war to serve in rebel and government armies.
Jake Wirstschafter, a teacher at Heschel Day School in Nothridge, California, will expand a student led oral history project with Holocaust survivors. In addition, this year’s oral histories will also focus on upstanders in the community. The completed stories will be featured on Facing History and Ourselves’ Choosing to Participate website, www.choosingtoparticipate.org.
Jane Wooster, an urban studies teacher at Animo Jackie Robinson School in Los Angeles, California, has designed an exciting Choosing to Participate project. Her students will work with mentors from Loyola Marymount University to examine their communities, identify a problem, and become part of the solution. Project will culminate with an event where the students will share their work for the broader school community.
Nicolette Tiberio is a Facing History and Ourselves alumnae and teacher at the Garfield High School Social Justice Academy in Los Angeles, California. In her class’s Choosing to Participate project, "Toolbox for Change," her students will create a plan of action that connects their study of history with their ideas about civic responsibility. Many of the projects will focus on the challenges of violence and intolerance.
Nicole Solig, a teacher at the Los Angeles School for Global Studies in Los Angeles, California, will complete a project with her class titled, "Bearing Witness." As part of their Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior unit, her class will publish an anthology about intolerance. The “bear witness” anthology will include letters, short stories, poems, photo collages or other creative work on the theme of intolerance.
Carole Thomas, a teacher at Signal Mountain Middle/High School in Signal Mountain, Tennessee, will work with her students to recognize the traumatic effects of destructive historical events on human society and explore the idea of resilience The project, Inspired by the work of Bernard Gotfryd, a Holocaust survivor, author, and one of the most celebrated photojournalists of the 20th century, the students will create a magazine with profiles survivors featuring interviews and photographs.
Carrie Paulo, of Arlington High School in Arlington, Tennessee, will complete a project titled, “The Second Generation.” Her students will partner with Facing History and Ourselves to learn the stories of second generation survivors of the Holocaust. For their project, students will interview survivors and collect their stories on a blog, secondgenerationproject.wordpress.com, where they share ideas. The class will also create a film based on their interviews. According to Ms. Paulo, the project is about self-discovery and sharing new perspectives with the world. Each participant’s interview will be shared on the Facing History website.
Mark Scott, a teacher at East High School, and Scott Moore, a teacher at White Station High School, both in Memphis, Tennessee, will participate in a semester-long “Neighborhood in Action” project inspired by the theme of Choosing to Participate. In their community action projects students will focus on the social fabric that makes a “good society.” Students will focus on one aspect of the neighborhood life and observe, collect, photograph, record, and journal about the life of the community. In the classroom, they will use their experiences to express their vision of what a healthy community looks like and how their piece fits into the fabric of the larger neighborhood.
North America Project
Merritt Robinson, is a Facing History and Ourselves teacher at Manual High School in Louisville, Kentucky. As part of her school’s service learning program, using Skype, Robinson will connect her students to community organizations and individuals who are choosing to participate.
Natalie Herzog, of the Holocaust Museum Houston in Houston, Texas, will bring Facing History and Ourselves’ resources and methods into juvenile prisons. The project is an extension of the museums “Youth and the Law program”.
Elizabeth Kuhnell, a teacher at Waggener Traditional High School in Louisville, Kentucky, will expand her school’s service learning program. Her students will create a city-wide PSA to profile needs within the community, especially those of newly arriving refugees. The project is part of a larger Facing History and Ourselves initiative in the district.
Emily Taylor, of Swansea High School in Swansea, South Carolina, will attend an annual conference of Holocaust educators.
Gary Padgett’s class at Tampa Bay Technical High School in Tampa Bay, Florida, will create films based on Facing History and Ourselves Choosing to Participate resource book and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We expect several of the films will be streamed on the Choosing to Participate website.
Sonya Brown, of Boston Arts Academy in Boston, Massachusetts, will teach three courses that use Facing History and Ourselves themes including identity, memory and legacy, race, stereotyping, and concept of individual choice. These courses which feature original music and art that express the students’ knowledge and understanding of conflict in Darfur, will culminate in a student-run fundraising event for victims of the genocide in Darfur.
Megan Harvell, a teacher at St. Mary of the Assumption in Brookline, Massachusetts, will integrate the study of Catholic social teachings with Facing History and Ourselves pedagogy. The key question of the course asks, “How are students inspired to stand, act, and fight injustice, and how might this translate into action?” A year-long exploration of this will culminate in student leaders creating a school wide banquet where they share the lessons they learned about how impoverished communities around the world live and how we can help them to provide food for their community .”
Rachel Hirsch, Tom Evans, Anne Rearick, and Tad Lawrence, all teachers at the Cambridge School of Weston in Weston, Massachusetts, lead the Art and Community program where art students from their private high school meet and work with students at a local public middle school studying Facing History and Ourselves and creating art inspired by the topics and themes . Hirsh has been using Facing History materials and principles in her teaching for the past 20 years. All four educators will attend a Facing History’s Race and Membership seminar this summer to help them be more effective teachers dealing with issues of injustice and inequality.
Darlene Marcano, a teacher at The Engineering School in Hyde Park, Massachusetts, will have her students participate in an intensive community service project, which involves interviewing community members, serving their community, conducting research, creating murals, and writing about their experiences. The class will use Facing History and Ourselves’ Choosing to Participate resource book throughout the project.
Lori Novick-Carson, an 8th grade humanities teacher at South Area Solomon Schechter School in Norwood, Massachusetts, will use primary source materials and the Facing History and Ourselves framework to construct a case study of the 1692 Salem witch hunt.
Garrett Peters, of Our World Neighborhood Charter School in Astoria, New York, will travel a trip to Memphis to meet with and observe other Facing History and Ourselves teachers to build a stronger unit for his class, become a better Facing History teacher, and bring best practices back to the curriculum design and pedagogy committee in Social Studies and ELA classes on which he serves.
Jacob Fay, a teacher at the Dwight-Englewood School in Englewood, New Jersey, will conduct a project modeled on Facing History and Ourselves’ Choices in Little Rock curriculum. His “Choices in Englewood” project will examine the local area's various school desegregation movements through oral history interviews. He will work with Columbia University to equip his students with the tools to venture into neighborhoods and partner with someone who was involved in these movements. The interviews will ultimately be produced as an anthology that will be given to local libraries and added to the Columbia University Oral History Archives.
Melissa Fully, of Envision Academy Charter High School in Oakland, California, will publish her students’ “Universe of Obligation Memoir Project.” The memoirs will focus on the questions: “What is my universe of obligation?”, “What leads to inhumanity?”, and “How can we respond to inhumanity?” The students’ personal stories of overcoming adversity, finding inspiration, making a difference, and discovering their own “best self” will be informed by their Facing History and Ourselves studies. These stories will be gathered and self-published in a bound book that is disseminated within the school community and to parents.
Eileen Vollert O’Kane, a teacher at the Immaculate Conception Academy, a Christo Rey School in San Francisco, California, will use camcorders to record oral histories of Holocaust survivors. The interviews will be part of the culminating activities and student presentations in a Facing History and Ourselves unit.
Charlotte Carlson and Eran DeSilva, 10th grade teachers at Notre Dame High School in San Jose, California, will print and display their students’ graphic novels as part of a culminating project of an in-depth unit on Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior. The novels highlight causes, conflicts, and the impact of mass violence, and focus on the actions of “upstanders” whose stories emerge through the students’ research. They will weave Facing History throughout the grade levels in addition to strengthening the Facing History unit in the sophomore humanities curriculum.
Kyle Beckham, a teacher at Downtown High School in San Francisco, California, teaches an integrated 10th-12th grade course on the history of American education based on Facing History and Ourselves: Race and Membership in American History. His students will create a two-part digital media presentation that requires them to demonstrate issues of inclusions/exclusion in the American education system. The second part of the project will require them to reflect on their own educational experience and how the themes in Race and Membership directly impact their lives.
Tim Dingwall, who teaches a genocide elective for the Toronto District School Board, will host a conference based on the themes raised by Facing History and Ourselves. The week-long conference will involve students and community members, and will culminate with a screening and conversation about a Facing History related film.
Lisa Turner, a teacher at the Sole Alternative Program in Ontario, teaches a Facing History and Ourselves elective course. She will purchase books to build up her school’s library with resources related to her course. These resources will allow her to connect the history and themes of Facing History and Ourselves resources with key moments in Canadian history.
