ways to find these community members who could bring the teaching of justice outside the walls of the classroom.

Transcription

1 By Rosie Sansalone The Pathways for Justice educational seminar took place on the campus of The Summit Country Day School from July 20 to 25, Sixteen teachers from across the state of Ohio gathered to learn about how to develop a curriculum that uses the lessons of the Holocaust as a lens to teach social justice. The seminar was funded through a grant from The Memorial Library in New York City, a foundation founded by Holocaust survivor Olga Lengyel. Olga Lengyel lost her parents, her husband and her two sons at Auschwitz. She describes her experience in her memoir, Five Chimneys, one of the first testimonies to give voice to the horrors of the Holocaust. Her life reminds educators that it is their job to make sure all voices are heard. The seminar found its way to The Summit s campus as a result of our strong character education and professional development programs. I attended an education seminar during the summer of 2014 in New York City at The Memorial Library. Teachers at the seminar received the charge to humanize the world through the use of writing to promote social justice in the classroom. Using the Holocaust as a lens, we spent two weeks working together to develop and understand curricular ideas with a heavy focus on writing via the model of The National Writing Project; in addition, we received inspiration from speakers, which included survivors, social justice educators and writing teachers. To broaden the perspective, teachers enjoyed cultural activities and collegial curriculum presentations. After attending this 2014 summer program, Sondra Perl, director of the educational seminar in New York, asked me to join with Sue Fletcher, a teacher from Athens, Ohio to co- facilitate the Ohio satellite seminar. Since the mission of the Library and that of The Summit s character education program aligned, Middle School Director Mike Johnson, agreed that this would be a beneficial partnership and opportunity, and thus we used The Summit s campus to house this seminar, which focused on the need to inspire our students to humanize the world and fight for justice. The premise of our weeklong satellite seminar at The Summit was that the pathway to justice includes self- respect, empathy and inclusion. This description of the pathway to justice is credited to Carl Wilkens, the only American who stayed in Rwanda during the genocide. He shared this definition of justice with our Summit eighth graders last year during an interview for our eighth grade capstone project entitled Hear My Story; Be My Voice: Giving a Voice to Humanity. This project uses the power of story and human connection to put a name and a face to the struggle of injustice for the students, as well as providing restorative justice healing to the participants. This project grew out The Summit Country Day School s character education program which charges each grade level to authentically weave together its grade level character trait with our rigorous academic curriculum. Thus, our seminar was a conceptual journey that followed this pathway to justice. Our first day focused on identity and self- respect. We opened with a discussion of developing a classroom of respect where the dignity of each student is understood and respected, thus allowing for a mosaic of humanity to be authentically created within the

2 classroom. Understanding our individual complex identity allows us to understand our uniqueness with all its corners and edges, beauty and color, so as to be able to see and understand how we fit into the larger mosaic. We focused on this idea of complexity of identity creating identity boxes and writing poems during a lesson based on George Elle Lyon s poem, Where I m From. In addition to identity, we launched into another aspect of the seminar which was to look at justice through the lens of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Our first speaker in this regard was Summit chaplain Fr. Phil Seher. He discussed his own personal story how he grew up in post- WWII Europe and occasionally skipped school to ride his bike to an abandoned concentration camp to ponder and pray. He could not understand how the murder of nine million people was possible. He tried to discern on that spot at such a young age what he could do with his life to make the world a more charitable place which worked toward peace and justice. He was 12 years old at the time! In addition he discussed the social justice principles of the Catholic Church, and a bit about the history of The Summit as he toured the participants through The Summit s Immaculate Heart of Mary Chapel. He learned during the talk that The Memorial Library, like The Summit, also uses the sunflower as a symbol for justice and peace, as well as charity and forgiveness. The solidarity of the mission of both The Summit and The Memorial Library became apparent during his talk. The second step of the seminar was to begin to develop the understanding of empathy through the discussion of the Holocaust. We began to bond as a group after sharing an evening with Charles and Sylvia Samis. They were guests of honor in my home for a dinner followed by a presentation by Mrs. Samis, child of survivors and member of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. During her moving presentation, Mrs. Samis shared her mother s story of survival; in addition, she played on her violin pieces of music that represented the pain of suffering, as well as the resilience of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust. The evening was a visceral experience of story, music, poetry and voice. This event put a name and face to the injustices of the Holocaust for the participants, before they began to grapple with how to teach the difficult questions of the history which led to the Holocaust an event which was not inevitable, but rather the result of choices and complicity and complexity of roles among those involved ranging from perpetrator, bystander and upstander which ultimately led to the murder of over nine million human beings. The teachers participated in a jigsaw lesson activity using the book The World Must Know. Copies of this Holocaust history were donated by the United States Holocaust Museum. In addition, as a USHMM Teacher Fellow, I modeled lessons suggested by USHMM for teachers to use in the classroom while teaching the Holocaust. Teachers were introduced to recorded video testimonies from the USC Shoah Foundation a foundation created by Steven Spielberg to document the testimonies of survivors. With a focus on cultural resistance, the teachers watched the testimony of Helen Fagin, a survivor who resisted by organizing a clandestine school. In addition, teachers learned of the resistance through the power of writing of Polish Jews forced to live in the Warsaw. We discussed Oneg Shabbat, which was a group of members of the Warsaw Ghetto who encouraged people to keep diaries and write poetry to document history. These writing were hidden and buried in

3 milk cans in the ghetto. Finally, the participants learned the story of 39 Red Roses which is the story of Cyla Cybulska and Jerzy Bielecki a love story which resulted in the one of the only successful escapes from Auschwitz. This story of rescue, introduced the teachers to the work of another New York City foundation, The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous. Teachers were given suggestions as to how to apply these stories and lessons to the classroom. This focus on story and life speaks to how to develop an understanding of empathy and humanization in the classroom. This allows teachers and students to fight against the dehumanization the instrument used by the Nazis which stripped victims of their humanity. With this understanding, the teachers took their first field trip of the week to The Center for Holocaust and Humanity (CHHE). Executive Director Sarah Weiss conducted a training session on how to use Echoes and Reflections, a Holocaust curriculum developed in conjunction with the Anti- Defamation League, the USC Shoah Foundation and Yad Vashem, the World Center for Holocaust Research, Documentation, Education and Commemoration in Israel. The teachers were given a tour of CHHE s exhibit Mapping our Tears during which they learned about how this history connects to survivors who live in Cincinnati. The highlight of the day was hearing the testimony of Holocaust survivor, Werner Coppel, a longtime resident of Cincinnati. He was the first survivor in Cincinnati to begin telling his story publicly after reading an article in the newspaper that the story of Anne Frank was a hoax. He has been speaking to school groups since then sharing his message and charging audience members to stand up against hate and prejudice even if it does not affect them. CHHE is a treasure for teachers, students and community members in Cincinnati and surrounding area. The Center provides programming, seminars, workshops, leadership summits, and traveling exhibits which support its mission to promote tolerance, inclusion and social justice based on the lessons of the Holocaust. With this foundation, our seminar moved along the Pathway to Justice taking the next step towards inclusion and humanization. Seminar participants listened to the speech given by Rabbi Prinz on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during The March on Washington. In the speech he says, When I was the rabbi of the Jewish Community in Berlin under the Hitler Regime, I learned many things. The most important thing that I learned in my life and under those tragic circumstances is that bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problems. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence. Participants responded in writing and discussed the following question: How is Rabbi Prinz asking us to work for justice to effect change in our world? His speech provided the bridge from the Holocaust to Civil Rights and social justice issues. We then read, discussed and introduced the Jamming on the Text activity using Martin Luther King Jr. s Letter from a Birmingham City Jail. This activity, which is based on the premise of using the power of voice to inspire students, filled our seminar room with the inspirational words of Martin Luther King Jr. words written while he was incarcerated for fighting for justice and equality. The activity involved participants reading Letter from a Birmingham City Jail in silence while they highlighted words, phrases and sentences which spoke to working for justice. Participants then shared lines they highlighted in a random fashion creating a musical mosaic of voice which included the wisdom filled words of Martin Luther King Jr. This lesson modeled for teachers a creative way to use primary

4 source documents with students with the ulterior motive of sharing the wisdom and voice of people who have indeed used their voices to fight for justice. These activities were in preparation for the following day s activity, which were focused on the role Cincinnati played in the Underground Railroad and the Civil Rights movement. Harvey, our docent at the Freedom Center, did a beautiful job of introducing our participants to the highlights of the museum, as well as making it clear that the underground railroad rolls everyday and that we are part of it. The freedom quilt, the discussion of the slave pen, the freedom stature and the room dedicated to the men and women who did not survive the passage from Africa were all an inspirational mosaic of story which further inspired teachers to use this history to work for justice. Harvey connected the struggle of slavery and the role of the Underground Railroad to the fight for social justice, equality and freedom. Participants were given time after the tour to write and reflect before returning to The Summit. One of participants wrote the following poem in response to our time at the Freedom Center: Middle Passage Waves crest over the restless dead. their voiceless cries reach up, a column of infinite turquoise and celadon swirl towards sunlit freedom reaching up yet never touching the light We reach out our hands tendons straining through the riptide of faceless history, to name the dead. Our whispers stretch out and brush the face of God. We emphasized the use of reflective writing as a way to process the heavy topics we were discussing. This emphasis on writing modeled for the teachers various ways to use the written word to promote justice in their classrooms. After our visit to the Freedom Center, we returned to The Summit for our afternoon speaker, Dr. Herman Turner, who is a veteran, Olympic athlete and educator. He inspired the group with his story, his voice, his wit and his wisdom. We asked him to speak to the teachers in the seminar as a way for them to see the importance of connecting students with members of the community. Dr. Turner participated in The Summit s eighth grade capstone project in He was paired with Summit student Evan Stapleton. Dr. Turner continues to mentor Evan; for example, with the guidance of Dr. Turner, Evan spoke at a Tuskegee airman convention last year. This community mentorship broadens our students scope and understanding of community and justice. Participants brainstormed

5 ways to find these community members who could bring the teaching of justice outside the walls of the classroom. Finally, we linked these experiences to ideas for teaching To Kill A Mockingbird. We encouraged literature teachers to use novels and memoirs as a foundational text for the teaching of social justice. This fourth day of the seminar ended with a presentation by Caleb Paull, a digital story expert. Participants were encouraged to consider this genre as an avenue for their final project, which they would develop from one of their written reflections from throughout the week. That night, as we did every night, we shared continued dialogue at a local restaurant. This dialogue around the dinner table provided teachers with much needed rest, good food and rejuvenating dialogue after the heavier work of the day. Our final full day of the seminar began with a tour of the Islamic Center of Cincinnati. This was a powerful introduction to the Muslim faith and this important piece of the mosaic which part of the community of Greater Cincinnati. Our tour guide was passionate about her faith and used storytelling to help the participants to understand the tenants and the pillars of Islam. We also had the opportunity to spend time in the mosque. This was the first introduction for most of participants, outside of what is presented in the newspapers, to Islam and the Muslim faith. Again, this experience put an authentic name and face to how this beautiful faith works for charity and justice. After lunch at an outdoor café, participants returned to The Summit for a presentation which highlighted the Summit eighth grade capstone project, Hear My Story; Be My Voice. This gave participants an example of how to put justice into action through student projects based on writing. Rising Summit ninth grader grader Caroline Kubicki offered the student perspective and experience while sharing the microphone with Zuhall, a young Afghan woman whom Caroline interviewed for her eighth grade capstone project during the school year. Zuhall shared her heartbreaking story of leaving her family behind in Afghanistan in order to try to begin to build a life of freedom in the United States. Like Dr. Turner and Evan, Caroline and Zuhall have formed a powerful human connection which continues today as Caroline, with the support of her parents, has learned that even at the young age of 14 she can work to promote justice in our community through reaching out a hand of empathy and justice to this young woman. Indeed, we often shared the following idea which is promoted in both the Talmud and the Quran, that if you save one life you save the world. We closed our seminar day, as we did each day, with a poem this time a powerful mulit voice poem which had been written by a former seminar participant. This final evening we participated in Shabbat services at Rockdale Temple in Amberly Village. Rabbi Meredith Kahan met with our group prior to the service to discuss Judaism and the significance of Shabbat. The Rockdale community was incredibly welcoming and it was a inspiriting and faith- filled cultural experience for our participants during which they learned how the Jewish community works for social justice. Our closing dinner that night was a beautiful mosaic of sharing with regard to how the experiences of the weeklong seminar helped participants reach personal and professional goals. It was exciting and energizing to hear how our participants planned to take what they had learned and use it in their classroom.

6 Our time together helped to inspire facilitators and participants alike to build a mosaic of community, which centered on respect for human dignity, preservation of humanity and the fight for justice. After giving each participant a gift of a copy of the memoir I Am Malala as part of our plans for moving forward and continuing the discussion of what we learned in our seminar via a book discussion beginning in September, our seminar ended, with individual presentations by the participants. These presentations, which included poems, narratives, digital storytelling, video and personal reflections, were authentic to the identity of each of the participants. The result was an incredibly inspirational and beautiful mosaic of voice. We cried, we laughed, we trusted as each participant shared his or her personal reflection on the week all of which grew out of the story of Olga Lengyel a story and life preserved and shared by The Memorial Library in New York City through Olga s foundation the Library s generosity and desire to work to create a just and peaceful world made this inspirational week possible. I close this written reflection with one participant s poem, which I think beautifully reflects the premise of our seminar as well as our gratitude to Olga Lengyel s inspirational legacy. Thank You I found my voice this week You didn t know it was lost But fear was paralyzing And I rarely left my house I found my voice this week You are all to thank for that By opening up your hearts to me And allowing me to open back I went out in the world this week To the past through stories shared But also into the community Which I did not realize was there I took a risk this week I chose to look inside To learn about who I am I am striving not to hide I learned so much this week About empathy and fear To be an upstanding participant living fully while I am here

7 I made new friends this week A mosaic of humanity From all faiths and backgrounds Each gave a gift to me Photos 1. Group photo at The Summit Country Day School 2. Group photo at The Freedom Center 3. Group photo at The Islamic Center:

8

9