Margot Stern Strom Teaching Award: 2012 Recipients
Facing History MSS Award Winner Profile: Kathy Reynolds |
The Margot Stern Strom Teaching Award was established in 2006 to honor the passion of Facing History and Ourselves' Founder and Executive Director Margot Stern Strom, and is generously funded by a donor.
Stay tuned for information on the NEW Margot Stern Strom Innovation awards that recognize educators that are thinking outside-of-the-box to transform schools and impact student learning.
Does this sound like you or an educator you know? Application and nomination details will be posted here by January 25.
Meet Some of 2012’s Inspiring Educators
Andrea Glickman, Shaker Middle School, Shaker Heights, Ohio
Roots of African American Music
“Facing History consistently provides meaningful, relevant content and processes that literally 'changes mindsets.' A recent Shaker Heights High graduate and Facing History student leader used that phrase when she visited me at the middle school this year to share her excitement about receiving funding to pursue research on eco-racism. She is thrilled to further her career as an activist, and attributes it to her exposure to Facing History and Ourselves.”
Glickman will organize a team-building experience in the spring at Shaker Middle School and will use Facing History materials to discuss the evolution of African American music. The students will study music and connect history to theater and literary art. The grant will fund supplies and speaker fees.
International
Quetzalli Sotelo Schmelkes, INIDE Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City, Mexico
Facing History Resources for Second Language Learners in Mexico
The goal for Quetzalli Sotelo Schmelkes is to better equip teachers who work with students in very poor, rural, indigenous communities in the mountains of the state of Chiapas in the southern part of Mexico. The students there do not speak Spanish and the teachers are not trained in how to teach English as a second language. Schmelkes will translate five resources, including The Bear That Wasn’t to Tseltal and Tsotsil Maya languages. The resources will be focused on identity, membership, and participation to offer another narrative to the students’ history of oppression and misunderstanding of their culture.
Ben Gross, Woburn Collegiate Institute, Ontario, Canada
The Art of Samuel Bak: Reflection and Response
“Several members of my class have been struggling with the competing ideas of post-genocide revenge and forgiveness. More specifically, they had been struggling with the idea of forgiveness. The idea of forgiveness seemed alien to them, not only in the context of the Holocaust, but in their own lives. After the presentation [from a Holocaust] survivor, we had a question and answer session that was incredible. The students sat silently and took in the fact that a man who had been through so much pain and suffering was passionately telling them that the most important thing in life was to forgive, to not become the people who tried to destroy him, to maintain his humanity.”
The work that Gross will do with his students builds on prior and ongoing learning in the Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity elective course. In collaboration with another project and the Samuel Bak exhibit “Icons of Loss,” artists will work in the classroom with students. By using Voicethread technology, students will reflect on and respond to the artwork produced by a partner classroom. They will then participate in a live symposium to learn from a Toronto artist-activist, view the works of Samuel Bak, and be in a workshop with the partner classroom to explore ways art and self can be used to create and to lead change.
Explore the profiles of this year's winners:
Chicago | Los Angeles | San Francisco
Cleveland | New England | Toronto
Denver | New York | International | North America
View recipients from past years.
