Professional Development: Using Visual Text to Teach the Holocaust
January 8, 2025 and January 15, 2025
4:00–6:00 PM
$40 (price includes both dates)
Recommended for middle and high school teachers
*Teachers will receive 4 CTLE credits for attending both dates of this workshop
This two-part workshop introduces the Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center-produced documentary Testimony of the Human Spirit, which explores the Holocaust through the memories of six men and women who lived through it as children or adolescents under the Third Reich. Woven together with family photographs, archival footage, and a moving original score, their testimonies illuminate what everyday life was like for young people and their families under Nazi persecution. The survivors’ accounts, conveyed with clarity, warmth, and candor, provide valuable insights into both the historical realities of the period and the resilience of the human spirit.
Steve Goldberg, Director of Education at HHREC, will facilitate a discussion of the film and share pedagogical approaches for integrating it into English Language Arts and Social Studies curricula within Holocaust units. Participants will receive a Teacher’s Guide that includes suggested discussion questions and instructional activities.
Teachers will receive 4 CTLE credits for attending both dates of this workshop. Later in the Spring, teachers will be invited to bring their students to the JBFC Theater to watch Testimony of the Human Spirit and have a discussion with Steve Goldberg afterwards. Screening dates to be determined.
Instructor
Steve Goldberg
Steven A. Goldberg is the Director of Education of the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center in White Plains. After teaching global history and geography and AP European History at Edgemont HS for sixteen years, he taught and served as social studies department chairman for the City School District of New Rochelle for 30 years. He also was an adjunct professor at Manhattanville University where he taught a course on Holocaust films. A past president of both the New York State Council for the Social Studies and the National Council for the Social Studies, he has also served as a consultant to the New York State Department of Education. Most recently he was the project manager for the creation of a new platform of on-line resources for teaching the Holocaust and other genocides. Among his responsibilities for the HHREC are the planning and implementation of professional development activities for teachers, including organizing and leading biennial educational trips to Germany and Poland He has made presentations and conducted workshops and seminars on a wide range of curricular and pedagogical topics, including teaching the Holocaust, the history of antisemitism, and the symbols and language of hate.
