Holocaust+Unit+Final+Reflection

I first started teaching what I deemed to be a Holocaust unit three years ago when I became the main 8th grade reading teacher at my school. Before then I was the main 8th grade English teacher, and my experience with teaching such an extensive unit was non-existent. During my first year as the main 8th grade reading teacher, we simply read the play version of //The Diary of Anne Frank// and that was basically the extent of our Holocaust unit. Upon completion of reading the play, I realized how much more there needed to be in our curriculum to fully teach the students about this time period. Unfortunately, my knowledge of the Holocaust was extremely limited, basically coming only from the little bit that I had been taught in high school. So, the next year, before we began reading the play, I embarked on a small research project of my own, gathering materials I felt were appropriate and necessary to help my students understand better the play and Anne Frank. We watched a few videos about survivors, did a background lesson on Anne Frank, and once again, read the play. We also visited the Holocaust/Jewish Memorial Museum in Tulsa. It was upon this visit to the museum, looking at the artifacts that not only corresponded to the Holocaust, but to World War II in general, as well as other periods of hate, that I really began to wonder, what exactly was I teaching? Why was I teaching it? And how much of what I was teaching did I really know about? Fast forward to my third year as the 8th grade reading teacher, which was last school year. Based on the previous two years, I knew that I wanted to do more with what was quickly emerging as a Holocaust unit that involved more than just reading //The Diary of Anne Frank//. It was at this time that I developed the background information worksheets lesson plan and key dates, terms, and peoples power point presentation that is in my curriculum unit. I am still developing new ways for my students to fully grasp the background of how the Holocaust and I would prefer to do so in other ways besides worksheets and long power point notes. But, for now, this is the best avenue that I have found for “cramming” a lot of historical background into the unit in order to prepare my students for the understanding they will need to fully appreciate the literature aspect of our unit. Ideas that I have for the future include collaborating with our main 8th grade social studies teacher so that she can handle the historical aspect of the Holocaust unit, while I handle the literature side. This would allow both of us to do much more in our classrooms due to time constraints, but also allow the students a much more enhanced learning environment. During the development of this curriculum unit, I learned so much about what I personally needed to do as an educator in order to be able to properly teach my students about the Holocaust. The research aspect of this assignment truly taught me how little I am educated in the proper pedagogical techniques that are required for teaching such an extensive unit. Using the considerations of the experts that I researched during this unit, especially the United Stated Holocaust Memorial Museum, I have added several lessons to my unit, such as a research based power point presentation that my students will conduct and the poetry and photograph analysis section of the unit. I will continue to teach the play version of //The Diary of Anne Frank//, but from now on my Holocaust unit will also involve the reading and teaching of the young adult literature book, //The Devil’s Arithmetic//. Although to date I have not fully assessed or written out lesson plans for this novel, I do have a lesson plan book that I bought specifically for this part of the unit, and I plan to use some of these lessons, adapt them to make them my own, and also formulate my own lesson plan ideas. Our textbook discuss this form of curriculum planning as well. Finally, I still plan to use multiple movies and videos for my unit, but with each, instead of just watching them, I plan to have my students reflect on the themes and characters in the movies, their actions, how they are relevant to our unit as a whole, and how they apply to the student’s life. In doing this, I feel that the movies will have a much greater impact on the students’ as well as become a more integral part of my Holocaust unit—not just a simple goof-off movie day. The Holocaust teaches students many life-long lessons that I personally feel are vital to their growth as an individual. I feel that it is my personal duty to educate myself in the best possible way about this event in history so that I may educate my students in the best possible way. Although my Holocaust unit has changed numerously over the last few years, and will no doubt continue to change as I continue to learn new things as well, I hope these changes and the lessons that result from them, will teach my students the valuable lessons that the Holocaust unit offers: the value of humanity, democracy, and equality.
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