Section 1: Introducing the journey page 1
Section 1: Introducing the journey
Section at-a-Glance
The purpose of this section is to explore the essential questions such as:
? What does it mean to “Face History and Ourselves?”
? What will we be studying in this course? How do these topics resonate with my own life and society today?
? How do we make this classroom a place where we feel comfortable sharing our ideas and asking questions?
When exploring these questions, students will deepen their understanding of these concepts:
· Facing History and Ourselves
Terms introduced in this section include:
· Journals
· Classroom contract
The lesson ideas for this section are built around these core resources:
· Jonathan Lykes, “Perception” (video)
· Cover and table of contents, Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior
Part 1: Overview
Background information
To support the teaching of this section, we strongly recommend reading the preface and introduction of Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior.
Rationale: What is the purpose of this section? Why teach this material?
One way to understand the Facing History and Ourselves program is to think of it as a journey— a journey that provides a unique way for teachers and students to engage with history and ethics. We hope taking this journey provokes students to see themselves as individuals in a larger society. Describing their experiences in a Facing History classroom, students have remarked, “Something about our Facing History class felt different. We were studying the very things I was afraid of: being singled out, teased, and bullied; stereotyping; neighbors against neighbors in Nazi Germany. . . . Students couldn’t react angrily to how people treated each other in history and then turn around and do these very things to me.” When reflecting on her Facing History experience, another student shared, “I’ve had 13 math classes, 20 English classes, 6 or 7 science classes, art, P.E., Spanish . . . but in all the time I’ve been in school, I’ve had only class about being more human.”
In a Facing History journey, students examine choices made during pivotal moments in history and learn to think critically, empathize, recognize moral choices, make their voices heard and reflect upon what it means to participate as citizens in a democracy. As founder and executive director of Facing History and Ourselves Margot Stern Strom explains in the preface to the resource book Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior, the steps leading up to the Holocaust has been selected as the core case study for this course for several reasons: the research about the Holocaust is extensive, the history is both universal (encompassing factors of human behavior such as obedience and conformity) and particular; and this period highlights phenomena (i.e. unexamined prejudice, effective use of propaganda, restrictions of civil liberties) that are important for citizens of a democracy to understand; and exploring this history provides a foundation for the study of other genocides and crimes against humanity. We have also found that when students take the Facing History journey – when they explore the relationship between the individual and society, the ways individuals affiliate and make distinctions between we and they, the moral choices women, children and men have made during especially pivotal historical moments, questions of justice and judgment, and the motivations, resources and dilemmas of “choosing to participate” – they develop a vocabulary and tools that can be used to prevent acts of prejudice, hate, intolerance and violence. At the end of this course, we hope you and your students will be able to articulate your own rationale for this course.
In the first lessons of this semester, we suggest you provide students with some background about the purpose, content and goals for the course, and invite students to ask questions and express their own hopes and fears for this course. Exploring the cover and table of contents of the main text (resource book) for this elective, Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior (HHB), is one way to introduce them to this course. Some students may enter the course with some knowledge of the Holocaust while others may have never heard of it. During these first class periods, you can gauge what students already know and discover what students hope to learn. Many students will likely wonder, “Why is it important to study this history?” Margot Stern Strom, Facing History’s founder and executive director, offers one set of answers in the preface to the resource book. (See appendix for excerpt of this preface.) As this elective course proceeds, students should be continually encouraged to articulate their own answer to this question.
Another purpose of the first class periods is to reinforce the classroom community as a safe, supportive environment for the learning and sharing of ideas and points of view that will take place throughout the semester. Students will be talking about sensitive topics, such as prejudice and discrimination, perhaps with examples from their own lives. It takes a particular kind of trusting learning environment to help students engage honestly in important conversations about the choices made in the past and how they relate (or don’t relate) to the choices we make today. In a Facing History classroom teaching and learning is a shared endeavor where a healthy exchange of ideas is welcome. Students are encouraged to voice their own opinions and to actively listen to others; to treat different perspectives with patience and respect; and to recognize that there are no simple answers to complicated questions. In a Facing History classroom students’ ideas are taken seriously and are used to shape the direction of the course. In this section, we provide ideas about how you can begin a discussion with students about the type of learning environment you hope to create together. For example, we include a list of class norms that have been used in other Facing History classrooms (Handout 1.5).
The process of nurturing a reflective, safe, supportive classroom community is as much a part of the content of a Facing History course as the historical content students will be studying. The habits of behavior found in a Facing History classroom—attentive listening to diverse viewpoints, taking a risk, voicing clear ideas, and raising relevant questions—help students deeply understand historical content and practice skills essential for their role as engaged citizens. Philosopher John Dewey wrote that classrooms are not the training grounds for future democratic action, but rather places where democracy is already enacted. Perhaps this is why Professor Diane Moore has argued that “encouraging students to take themselves seriously and inspiring in them the confidence to do so are two of the most important roles of an educator in a multicultural democracy.”
Resources (What resources will help them learn about this topic?)
Note: For this course, students need journals. You can ask them to bring in a notebook or binder that they will use as a journal or you can provide them with journals. We suggest that students begin using journals as soon as possible.
Resources referred to in the lesson ideas:
Readings and images:
From Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior
o Book cover
o Preface (xiii-xix)
o Table of contents (v-xii)
Video and audio-recording:
Jonathan Lykes, “Perception” (3:21)
Handouts:
2 Handout 1.1 - “Perception” text of Jonathan Lykes’ poem (handout found in the appendix)
2 Handout 1.2 – Letter to students
2 Handout 1.3 – Letter to parents/guardians
2 Handout 1.4 - Excerpt of preface to Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior
2 Handout 1.5 – Sample Facing History classroom expectations
Other suggested resources:
Lessons
Decision-making in Times of Injustice: Lesson one
Identity and Communty: Lesson 10
Websites
: Facing History and Ourselves
: Linking the past to the moral choices of today
: The Facing History Journey
Part 2: Lesson Ideas
The lesson ideas presented here provide options for different ways you might use the core resources, and additional materials, to support students’ exploration of the section’s’ essential questions. We encourage you to use these ideas as a guide to support your own curriculum development.
Lesson idea #1 - Introduction to Facing History and Ourselves
(Suggested duration: 1 class period)
Recommended journal and discussion prompts
! What comes to mind when you hear the phrase “Facing History and Ourselves?”
! Identify a time when knowing something about the past – about history – was important to you or helped you in some way. Why do you think understanding this event was significant for you?
! A principal of a school once said to the teachers at his school, “Reading, writing, arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human.” What do you think he meant by this statement? What does it mean to become “more human?” What helps people learn how to be “more human?”
! What does it mean to study the Holocaust and human behavior? What do you already know about the Holocaust? What do you already know about human behavior?
Activity ideas
1. WARM-UP: Ask students to spend a few minutes writing in their journals about one of the suggested prompts. Students can respond to these same prompts at the end of the course and notice how their answers have changed. You may also want to begin the course by identifying the assumptions students already have about the Facing History elective. Students can complete a K-W-L chart. What do they know about the Facing History elective? What do they want to know? At the end of the introduction lessons, students can record what they have learned about the content and expectations of the course.
2. INTRODUCING THE COURSE: Teachers have used many different strategies and materials to introduce students to their Facing History course. You could incorporate one or more of these suggested activities with your own ideas for welcoming students to your class:
ð Sharing the experiences of former Facing History students: Because many adolescents believe their peers are more credible sources than adults, starting your course with the voices of former students can be an engaging way to begin your course.
o In the poem “Perceptions,” former Facing History student Jonathan Lykes describes his journey through a Facing History course. In this poem, Lykes refers to universal themes such as stereotyping and discrimination as well as specific historical events he studied in his Facing History class. The appendix includes the text of this poem (handout 1.1) and the Facing History website hosts a video of Jonathan reading his poem. Here are some ideas about how to structure a discussion about this poem:
o Before reading this poem or watching the video, ask students to think about the phrase Lykes uses to introduce his poem: I faced history and found myself. What does this phrase mean? Have students ever “found themselves” when studying the past?
o Use the chunking teaching strategy to help students paraphrase and interpret the meaning of this poem. Students can be assigned sections of the poem to work on in small groups.
o Give students the opportunity to read the poem to themselves. As they read, ask students to underline or highlight phrases or lines that stand out to them, perhaps because they strongly agree or disagree with the idea. Then, ask students to select one line or phrase that is particularly significant to them and to write about this line in their journals. Why does it stand out to them? What questions, ideas or experiences does this quotation raise for them? Use these quotations as a stimulus for class discussion.
o Use these questions to prompt journal writing and a class discussion: What does Jonathan Lykes mean when he says “perceptions?” What message does he express about them? Does he think perceptions are helpful or harmful? What do you think?
o From reading this poem, ask students to predict what they think might be the goals of a Facing History course. What do they think Jonathan learned about in this course? As they answer this question, encourage students to notice both the historical content and human behavior concepts he includes in his poem.
ð Writing a welcome letter - Many teachers write a letter to welcome students to this course. Facing History’s founder and executive director Margot Stern Strom and Rachel Shankman, Senior Director of Facing History’s Memphis office have also written a letter to students (handout 1.2) and a welcome letter to parents and guardians (handout 1.3). This letter can help begin to answer questions students, and parents/guardians may have about the content of the Facing History elective course.
ð Using the resource book – Some teachers have started their courses by giving students the opportunity to preview the resource book.
o First, students can read the preface to HHB in which Margot Stern Strom explains her rationale for Facing History. The appendix includes an excerpt of the preface (handout 1.4). We suggest having students read this text aloud (see read aloud strategy). The chunking strategy can help students process the ideas in this text.
o To help students begin to answer questions raised by reading the preface and/or watching student speeches, teachers ask students to review the table of contents of HHB. You could use the 3-2-1 strategy to have students report on what they find. Or, you could design a scavenger hunt that asks students to identify specific items from the table of contents, such as “one new word you have never seen before,” “one theme or idea that is relevant to your own life,” “one topic you have studied before.”
o Another way to use HHB to introduce the course is to ask students to interpret the cover image – a painting by Samuel Bak titled “Elements of Time” (see the teaching strategy Media Literacy: Analyzing Visual Images.) Refer to the Introducing a New Book for more ideas on how to use the resource book to introduce students to the elective course.
3. Building vocabulary: Beginning the first day of class, students will be introduced to new vocabulary. Facing History and Ourselves believes that definitions are "works-in-progress" - our understanding of ideas is continually refined as we learn new information, often in collaboration with others. Throughout this course, students should be encouraged students to construct their own meaning of important concepts. (For more on this topic read “Developing Vocabulary in a Facing History classroom.”)