The following Holocaust Education Conferences are recommended by the BHEC for scholarship recipients. Other conferences under consideration for scholarship requests must be approved by the BHEC.
Middle- and high-school educators with five or fewer years teaching about the Holocaust are invited to apply to attend this conference. Museum educators and scholars share rationales, strategies, and approaches for presenting this complex topic to students, in sessions designed specifically for middle- and high-school teachers. Participants have extensive time to view the Museum’s Permanent Exhibition: The Holocaust, tour Remember the Children: Daniel’s Story, and other special exhibitions, and visit the interactive computers in the Wexner Learning Center and other resource areas. Seminar sessions emphasize
planning and implementing units of study for teaching about the Holocaust in middle and high schools.
Requirements:
Taught Holocaust 1-5 years.
Location:
Washington, D.C.
Accommodations:
Hotel per conference recommendation. Attendee pays cost.
Each participant receives a voucher worth $100 toward purchase of Holocaust-related resources in the Museum Shop. Participants responsible for their own transportation and accommodations.
Belfer Next Step
The Belfer Next Step Regional Conferences will lay the foundation for Belfer alumni to assume leadership roles in Holocaust education in their region. The conferences will provide further professional growth in pedagogy and the history by examining issues related to the history, literature and moral and ethical implications of the Holocaust.
Up to 30 Belfer alumni in each region will be chosen to participate in the Next Step conferences.
This program, formerly known as the Mandel Teacher Fellowship Program, invites skilled secondary school teachers to join a national corps of teachers who serve as leaders in Holocaust education in their schools, communities, and professional organizations. Participants in this program create outreach projects to advance Holocaust education. This program pays all expenses for travel and costs for a week-long institute at the USHMM in August and a follow-up conference in the following May.
Requirements:
Secondary school (7th–12th grade) history, social studies, foreign language, and English teachers, librarians, and instructional media specialists, who have an extensive knowledge of Holocaust history, have taught the Holocaust for at least five years in U.S. schools, and are active participants in community and professional organizations, may apply. (Educators with less than five years experience teaching about the Holocaust should apply to the Museum’s Belfer Conference.)
Holocaust and Human Behavior
Sessions consider individual and group behavior. How our identity is formed? How we acquire membership in a group? Participants also consider the relationships among perpetrators, their victims, and bystanders. Other sessions examine the choices Germans and others made in the 1920s and 1930s. As we come to understand the way many of those choices undermined democracy, we begin to realize how hatred, indifference, denial, and opportunism, little by little, can shape a period in history. As we learn how the Jews, "Gypsies," and others were humiliated, isolated, and ultimately murdered during the Holocaust, we discover that history is not inevitable.
In closing sessions, participants consider questions of right and wrong, of guilt and responsibility. In these sessions, participants contemplate issues related to prevention, ethical decision making, and choosing to participate in a democracy, by returning to themes developed in the opening sessions.
Throughout the course, connections are made to other histories, such as those of Rwanda and South Africa. Participants relate the choices people made at other times with those faced in the world today. The course presents an array of teaching strategies that help develop the skills, values, and beliefs needed to build and sustain a democratic society. Participants will be provided with resource material and engage in studies based on the books developed by the staff including: Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior and seven study guides.
Requirements:
For teachers planning to teach or currently teaching the Holocaust.
The JFR's education program is comprehensive and far-reaching. It includes a summer residential program, an advanced seminar, an educators' trip to Germany and Poland, an academic newsletter, a teachers' Internet resource, and partnerships with Holocaust centers throughout the country. The cornerstone of the program is the book, Voices & Views: A History of the Holocaust, introduced and edited by Professor Debórah Dwork, a leading Holocaust historian.
Summer Institute for Teachers
The first Summer Institute for Teachers was held at Clark University in June 2000. Since June 2001, the Institute has been held at Columbia University in New York City during the last week in June. The program is a high-level, intensive academic seminar in which participants are exposed to Holocaust survivors such as Roman Kent and to noted Holocaust scholars including, Debórah Dwork, Henry Feingold, Peter Hayes, Marion Kaplan, Michael Marrus, Michael Phayer, Harry Reicher, Nechama Tec, and Robert Jan van Pelt. The Institute is designed to allow participants to meet in small groups following each lecture. These small groups enable the teachers and Holocaust center staff to share teaching concepts and to develop approaches to introducing the subject matter to their students.
All participants selected to attend the JFR Summer Institute for Teachers are known as
Alfred Lerner Fellows.
Requirements:
Teacher must be nominated by the Alabama Holocaust Commission, a designated "Center of Excellence." You must teach English or Social Studies at the middle or high school level, or you must work in an education capacity at your nominating center. You must be teaching at least five years. You must be at least four years from retirement. You must currently teach the Holocaust in your classroom. You must have attended at least one Holocaust related professional development program. You must agree to serve as a resource for the JFR and for the center that nominates you. A limited number of state grants are available. or currently teaching the Holocaust.
$600 (includes registration, accommodations and most meals)
Advanced Seminar
The JFR holds its Advanced Seminar in northern New Jersey over the birthday weekend of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This two-day intensive program is open only to Alfred Lerner Fellows. The Advanced Seminar focuses on three to four chapters from Voices & Views and provides an in-depth exploration of these topics. Participants are expected to complete required readings and writing assignments prior to the start of the program. The scholars for the January 2004 program were: Professor Debórah Dwork, who addressed "Life in Extremis - Jewish Life Under German Occupation"; Professor Harry Reicher, who addressed from "Nuremberg to Jerusalem: Bringing Holocaust Perpetrators to Justice"; and Professor Robert Jan van Pelt, who addressed the "Machinery of Death and the Murderers".
Requirements:
Teacher must have first complete the “Summer Institute for Teachers” and be considered an Alfred Lerner Fellow and must be nominated by their local Holocaust Center.
October 1, 2007 for BHEC application. October 15, 2007 for JFR application.
Cost:
$300
European Study Program in Germany and Poland The European Study Program in Germany and Poland offers participants an intensive educational experience. The first European Study Program was held in July 2003. The two-week program in Germany and Poland, which is limited to fifteen Lerner Fellows, includes visits to concentration camps, ghetto sites, and former shtetls and meetings with survivors, rescuers, local historians, and teachers. Robert Jan van Pelt and William Shulman are the scholars for the European Study Program.
The two-week program ends in Auschwitz, where the group spends four days with participants visiting Auschwitz, Birkenau, and reviewing documents in the archives. Participants have the opportunity to review what they learned during the two weeks. The program allows the group to discuss approaches to teaching the Holocaust and to reflect on their experience before departing for home. The Jewish Foundation for the
Righteous sees the European Study Program in Germany and Poland as its capstone and provides a subsidy for each participant.
Requirements:
Teacher must have first completed the “Summer Institute for Teachers” and be considered an Alfred Lerner Fellow and teacher must be nominated by their local Holocaust Center.
BHEC
deadline is October 15, 2007. JFR deadline is November 1, 2007.
Cost:
$3500-$4000 per person, double occupancy Includes all meals, transportation from New York, sites, taxes, travel insurance, guides, etc. Does not include passport/visa fee, beverages with meals, laundry and telephone.
$500.00 non-refundable deposit due November 1, 2007.
Martin & Doris Rosen Summer Symposium for Educators and the Community: "Remembering the Holocaust” The purpose of this conference is to provide a wide audience of public school teachers, university faculty, students, and concerned citizens with information and insights about the victims, perpetrators, and consequences of the Nazi Holocaust. The Symposium will raise basic questions about intolerance, indifference, and human courage in a dangerous world.
The symposium will provide approximately forty hours of instruction. Teachers who complete all forty hours will receive four CEU units.
Requirements:
Open to public school teachers and interested community leaders. nominated by their local Holocaust Center.
First 30 to apply. Begin reviewing applications in March.
Cost:
Full scholarships to first 30 North Carolina participants to sign up. Includes registration, all materials, room, breakfast and lunch each day, and dinner the first two evenings. Cost for out of state participants is $400 unless in-state slots are not filled.
International Seminar: "Teaching the Shoah and Antisemitism"
Our seminar convenes six full days a week – Sunday to Thursday, from 08:30-5:00 and on Friday, lectures will end at 2:00, or there may be optional tours. The seminar is both physically and emotionally taxing, and we shall do our utmost to assist participants in coping with the various aspects of it. A typical day’s activities include lectures, pedagogic workshops, group discussions, survivor testimonies and film. Hours are long and the materials presented – much of it highly academic and of pedagogic importance – requires a high degree of concentration. Participants are therefore obligated to prepare themselves adequately by reading as much background materials as possible. Recommended reading materials will be sent to the participant on acceptance to the seminar.
Requirements:
For dedicated teachers planning to teach or currently teaching the Holocaust. In order to be eligible for BHEC Scholarship, teacher must have attended a minimum of two (2) previous national Holocaust workshops.
Location:
Jerusalem, Israel
Accommodations:
Hotel paid by attendee. Approximately $95/day
(single) or $45/day (double). Cost includes breakfast.
Dates:
Winter Seminar: January 6, 2008 - January 24, 2008 Summer Seminar: July 13, 2008 - July 31, 2008
Winter Seminar: October 15, 2007
Summer Seminar: April 15, 2008
Cost:
$750 + $50.00 non-refundable application fee. Some scholarships available.
Jewish Educators Seminar:
“Teaching the Shoah, Antisemitism and Contemporary Israel" The seminar will feature academic lectures by leading scholars and educational experts from Yad Vashem and Israeli universities in order to provide the participants with historical knowledge in the field of the Holocaust. Special attention will be given to widening the participants' knowledge on pre-Holocaust Jewry and Jewish responses during Nazi occupation. The program will also discuss issues of
contemporary antisemitism; uses of survivor testimony; interdisciplinary teaching approaches; age-appropriate methodology; and the impact of the Holocaust on the Jewish world and its effects on Western civilization. Special workshops and discussion groups will enable participants to explore educational issues, pedagogical theories and practical applications in Jewish educational frameworks.
Requirements:
The seminar is open to Jewish educators working in Jewish day schools. Upon return to their respective schools, participants will be expected to implement a number of Holocaust education projects, such as coordinating ceremonies, teacher-training workshops, etc. They also must inform Yad Vashem of their endeavors. Maximum of 30 participants.
Location:
Jerusalem, Israel
Accommodations:
Hotel paid for by Yad Vashem, double occupancy.
Dates:
Winter Seminar: December 21, 2007- January 6, 2008 Summer Seminar: August 3, 2008 – August 21, 2008
Holocaust & Jewish Resistance Teachers Program A summer study program in Poland and Israel for U.S. secondary school teachers. Three-week seminar includes education activities in Poland and Israel with the participation of scholars from Israel’s Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the Study Center of the Ghetto Fighters’ House at Kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta’ot.
Requirements:
Secondary school teacher.
Location:
Poland and Israel.
Accommodations:
Hotel per conference recommendation; included in fee.
Includes round-trip travel from New York, trips to historic sites, hotel accommodations (2 to a room) and 2 meals daily. Payment is expected immediately upon notification of acceptance.
