This course of study seeks to familiarize the student with the challenges involved in teaching about the Holocaust through Narrative, and to present educational strategies and teaching methods designed to confront these challenges. Emphasis will be placed on the goals, in terms of skills and values, involved in effective teaching, and on creative methods for achieving these goals.

Program objectives:

• To learn key aspects of the Holocaust experience and explore its continued relevance to you and your students;
• To identify, master, and create practices in sharing these essential aspects with the next generation;
• To identify age-appropriate materials;
• To identify, design, and implement best practices in checking for understanding, connecting new learning to previous knowledge and interests, providing organizational strategies for learning, and assessing and evaluating students’ learning.

• Comprehension, interpretation, evaluation, and appreciation strategies with a variety of texts to increase empathy for, and understanding of, the dimensions of human experience
• Development of skills for reading and responding effectively, through discussion and writing, to primary sources, literature, and historical narrative
• Exploring the spiritual and religious resistance that portrays the dignity of people in the face of despair
• Recognizing and examining the different roles thrust upon or assumed by people, such as victim, oppressor, murderer, bystander, resister, and rescuer;
• Investigating the “choiceless choices” confronted by Jews and opportunities for choice confronted by the perpetrators