Facing History's Jewish Education Program Presents The Project Focused Learning Initiative

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Facing History has three main components. It's our scope and sequence or what we call our journey, it's our pedagogical triangle, and it's our reflective classroom. In our Holocaust and Human Behavior class, we are teaching with historical rigor. We want students to really understand the history, cause and effect, how to look at primary-source documents, how to look at testimony of survivors.

But we have these other two components that really make Facing History different and special, ethical reflection and emotional engagement. That's really answering the question of, "so what?" "Why should I care about this?" "How does this history have anything to do with me?" And in this project, the PFLI really taps into the emotional engagement.

It's turning out that a lot of schools are using the arts as a way to explore, emotionally, this history, this difficult history. So you may have teachers working with music. You may have teachers working with photography. But all of these different examples are ways to deepen, in an experiential way, students' experience with the Holocaust history.

Always mix the dry cement, kind of almost a powder, with water. And that will make similar to a liquid, almost like mud.

For this project, we really got to start from scratch.

Or you know what, I'll grab one.

I'll try one.

The kids had some understanding of what the Holocaust was. But not on such a personal level, which I think was really impactful for me, that I got to open up something for students that was not in my typical every day, being an art teacher. And it's a good crossover for me. I love history. But this was a very personalized history for most of our students.

They felt very connected when they watched video and photography and things. They were like, wait, they took pictures of this? It really affected them in a very different way, having that visual imagery. So I think having that kind of cross of the arts and history, and then now chemistry and figuring things out.

It's been very interesting having a project that's taking us the whole year. It has them really develop ideas in such a different way. We've had so many different ideas and prototypes coming through in the last two months, that we're kind of finally breaking things down and deciding what this monument's going to look like for the school and for the community and for these kids to really make that connection.

Being a PA on this project has been a very different kind of experience because it's less about going into the classrooms and hearing how we can make the curriculum of ours fit, and more how we can fit to the idea of the different teachers. We have teachers who are coming from hugely different backgrounds-- Judaic studies teachers and history teachers, art teachers, music teachers, spiritual practice teachers-- and they're bringing their own special thing.

So it's been exciting to go through this process of coming up with a project with the teacher and hearing how, immediately, they're pulling from their own resources, and their own histories, and their own interests, and their own passions and then deciding what they're going to do, so they can bring that into the classroom.

I've given them so far this year, through Facing History, a lot of content, so much content. They have so much context. They have so much research under their belt, that they really are leading this project into what they want to express to their audience.

But we're doing our research, well we came across a lot of sculptures that included hands. Everyone in our class liked the idea.

We're going to do my hands with my grandpa, then Matt's hands with his grandpa.

Mia and my grandpa are going to hold hands like that. Like this, kind of. And Alyssa and her grandpa are going to hold hands like that. And so it's kind of like from generation to generation, is the meaning, kind of. Then the rest of the class is going to do hands like this. And we're going to have plants in it.

They love the Andy Goldsworthy memorial and monument that has something growing from a stone. And so they like the idea of having their hands open and that something is growing from it. So they really want this idea of life and moving forward.

So the cement hands is like, they were hardened. Have you ever heard the term "battle hardened"? Like people who saw somebody die, they were hardened. They were broken, almost. So something like cement, that had hardened, literally. And then it's creating new life. The plants are growing from of it.

They had a hard time with a lot of the memorials and monuments that had this sadness. They're very positive, uplifting kids. So they're like, oh, everything's so sad. Why does it have to be so sad? And they thought, well, we wouldn't be here if it weren't for the fact that people survived. And there's this legacy that lives on.

So they wanted that to be impactful for viewers, that we are here because we lived past something that was tragic, and that we grow from that, and that it can't be forgotten. It's going to be remembered, but that we are here, and we are happy. And we're moving forward.

It's special to me to have my grandpa still alive with me today. I mean, it's still generation to generation. So I'm getting his story currently. So it's like, I'm soon going to be the one passing on the story. It's really cool to have us actually build something that I could take from my life that we made in honor of these people.

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We're really looking at themes. They're connecting this work thematically. And they may not even be aware yet, but as the project goes, the penny is going to drop. And they're going to realize that it's the themes that they're learning in humanities that are coming through in art.

Rhiannon was talking about how the humanities teacher has aligned with this project, and then works through it in her own class through a humanities lens. So then when they go to eighth grade, and they actually officially learn about the Holocaust in humanities, and they go on their Israel trip, they're going to have this to pull from. And they're going to be able to make those connections.

And that's what is going to make it a long-term learning experience because it goes through all of the different senses and all of their different classrooms. And then once they all pull it together, this is going to be something that they will remember and that they will really, I think, understand on an emotional level and not just on an intellectual level.

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As we move further and further away from the history of the Holocaust, we need to make sure that our students stay the custodians of this memory forever, and for their children and their children's children. Facing History focuses and believes in the idea that teachers have the capacity to tap into the moral philosopher that lies in every student. If they have had this emotional experience through this PFLI project, we know these students are changed because of that experience.

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