D.C. third-graders were made to reenact episodes from the Holocaust

[malaise]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/12/19/holocaust-reenactment-watkins-

A Watkins Elementary School staff member told third-graders in library class to reenact scenes from the Holocaust, directing them to dig their classmates’ mass graves and simulate shooting the victims, according to an email from the school’s principal. The instructor was placed on leave Friday.
She allegedly assigned specific roles to students. She cast one student as Adolf Hitler, according to an email from Watkins Elementary School Principal MScott Berkowitz to the third-graders’ parents. He did not name the staff member. That student is Jewish, according to the parent of a student who was asked to participate. At the end of the exercise, the child was told to pretend to commit suicide, as Hitler did.
Originally, the students were in library class on Friday for a self-directed project they would present to their classmates before winter break. But the instructor had students participate in the reenactment during their allotted research time, Berkowitz wrote to parents.
——————-
The teacher is onleave

[Ray Bruns]

1. The teacher is onleave.

The teacher should be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail.

[malaise]

9. THIS n/t

[panader0]

2. The teacher is on leave from her mind.

[MustLoveBeagles]

20. You can say that again

This was completely inappropriate.

[Walleye]

3. I guess she never heard of the blue-eyed vs brown-eyed experiments

The teacher tried in elementary school many years ago. Was damaging to the children

[Celerity]

4. fixed, working link

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/12/19/holocaust-reenactment-watkins-school-dc/

[malaise]

10. Thanks n/t

[Bucky]

5. As a teacher, I'm always being told to get my kids more engaged in history

You're gonna keep on getting stories like this if you don't want a world where history class is just kids filling out worksheets.

[Mary in S. Carolina]

7. Serously???

So, you condone this?

[Bucky]

13. Of course not. What an insulting question.

But if you ask teachers to develop creative engaging lesson plans, if you're asking them to think on their own, some teachers are gonna make mistakes. You can't have innovation without failure.

[Mary in S. Carolina]

19. Insulting? How about common sense???

I have to be honest, no one with any common sense would think it was a good idea for reenact the Holocaust. Bucky, do you think we are stupid to think this was just innocent mistake??? How dumb do you think we are??

[irisblue]

8. From the WaPo article..and reading it moved it to WTF!! from oh...bad idea in my POV

snip--"The instructor allegedly made antisemitic comments during the reenactment. The parent said that when the children asked why the Germans did this, the staff member said it was “because the Jews ruined Christmas.”
The instructor asked students after the reenactment not to tell anyone about it, but they told their homeroom teacher, the parent said."

snip--"This was not an approved lesson plan, and we sincerely apologize to our students and families who were subjected to this incident,” a spokesperson for DCPS said."

yeah, that instructor made this a million times worse.

[Demsrule86]

11. I prefer kids filling out worksheets personally than this nonsense. Those kids are way to young for

this sort of thing. We studied the holocaust early in High School. I researched and wrote a decent paper. I also had nightmares and honestly symptoms of post-traumatic stress from this awful research. I have had nightmares off and on since that time. I wake up screaming. And I was in High School. This subject should not be taught in great depth until college. I would be furious if my kids were subjected to this. My youngest daughter is very sensitive.

[Bucky]

14. Here's the thing: kids just filling out worksheets doesn't work. The lessons aren't retained.

This was, of course, a horrible error in judgment on the part of the teacher, who absolutely deserves to be disciplined for this.

But the number of students who will just do the reading and write a paper and learn from that is a pretty small percentage. It leads to the old saw of "Why weren't we taught this in history class?" complaints, which usually come from people who were "taught that" in history (especially over the last 30 years as American history texts have been getting demythologized), but didn't manage to keep it in their heads. They didn't learn it because it wasn't presented in a learnable way.

[nolabear]

16. There's a massively long continuum between the two.

Third graders are nine or ten. This is insanely inappropriate for that developmental level. They cannot process that level of horror in any meaningful way; they can only be affected by it at a more primitive level, be that unsubstantiated fears, identification with the Nazis—again, a fear response but turned outward, overwhelming and inappropriate guilt, shame at either being Jewish or being identified with the persecutors, and a host of other reactions.

They’ll have years to slowly absorb what they need to in order to understand, unless, of course, they’re so harmed they’ll shut down to any mention of it.

That teacher should never teach children again. Teens or adults, maybe. But still not that way.

[Bucky]

17. Of course. You and I are both saying inappropriate teaching shouldn't happen

I'm just telling you that it will happen, whether we like it or not.

[RobinA]

12. As A Former Student

who loved history from day one (apparently I'm some kind of weirdo), I am immeasurably glad that I was in school before this "engaged" bullshit got really rolling. Although there was some of it in my day. I never could figure out how making a Parthenon out of sugar cubes helped me learn history. Art, maybe, but not history. I have encountered it in professional development situations since and it always strikes me as a massive waste of time. Of course, I am an old-fashioned student who can sit and listen or read for hours. Activities, group projects, engagement, save me from all that.

[Bucky]

15. The student with 90% recall of what they were taught in class is incredibly rare.

I was one of those students. But as a teacher, I've found the lessons that the students work hands-on with have a much higher "stickiness" factor. This year I took the time out from the government class I teach to have my seniors write and act out debates between the four critical philosophers behind American democracy -- Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, and Montesquieu. It was a grind, but it was a creative grind. The thing is, now 3 months later I can have my students reference Montesquieu's influence in the Big State vs Small State debates at the Philadelphia Convention or the Hobbesian influence in the Electoral College, and they still get it.

I wouldn't have gotten that out of on-level high school students if I'd just stuck with the worksheets and vocabulary crossword puzzles and multiple choice quizzes. If we want students to learn deep instead of doing rote memorization (which quickly evaporates) we have to model taking lessons deep in the classroom. That's risk-taking.

I'm curious if your example of building a Parthenon out of sugar cubes is a rhetorical example you used to illustrate your point or if you actually made a Parthenon out of sugar cubes decades ago and still remember what it looked like, how your mimicked the architecture, and what the historical influence of Greek aesthetics were because you did that activity. If it's the latter, I'd certainly call that an example of a lesson's "stickiness". Yes, pun intended.

[Thtwudbeme]

23. With the new makerspaces, building stuff from sugar cubes is incredibly dull.

I had my kids build aquaducts and arches-- I had them create green screen videos where they "broadcast" chariot races and compare those to Nascar. I had them create posters with bibliographies for gladiators (MMA fighters) to promote to the "public."

[Bucky]

24. That's awesome!

History classes can and should be fun. I love many of the new online tools we can use to bring the past to life. I think it builds humanistic values the more we train kids to see the past as human struggling with the world they find themselves in.

I just wish we had more time to explore and maximize use of all these new tools. And I wish more school districts or able to afford them, or the hardware and class time to access them.

[kcr]

21. We'll keep getting stories like this regardless

No profession is utterly void of incompetents, and clearly, this woman was.

[Thtwudbeme]

22. As a teacher/ librarian in MS-

I fully engage kids in history:

To study early mankind, I put black table cloths over the tables in the media center, and put things under the table like sea shells, deer antlers, plastic fish bones- and print out cave paintings to decorate the walls. Then I turn out the lights in the media center and give the kids a small notebook and a flashlight. The kids have to crawl in and make educated guesses about the lives of people that would have lived in that cave.

Kids in 7th grade make their own astrolabes in the media center, and then navigate around the soccer field.

I am having university archivists visit my 8th graders this year bringing military uniforms, diaries and letters.

[Jedi Guy]

26. Where in Mississippi, out of curiosity? I grew up in Ocean Springs. :) N/T

[Takket]

6. Seems a little heavy for 3rd graders

[NowISeetheLight]

18. I used to read World Book in 5th grade

For Christmas when I was ten my parents bought me a set of World Book encyclopedias (1970s). I used to sit on the floor in my room and read them. I’d go to the library every week and I read a ton. I remember reading about WW2 and the Holocaust when I was in sixth grade. The encyclopedia had very graphic pictures and I still remember them. I was what today would be called a ‘gifted’ student.

One thing I can’t condone though is something like this being re-enacted in school. History can be taught constructively without this sort of lesson. I honestly can’t imagine what kind of IDIOT thought this was a good idea.

[Jedi Guy]

25. When I was in fifth grade, my class read The Diary of Anne Frank.

Back when I had hair (curse you, male pattern baldness!), it was white-blond, what some people call towheaded. I also have blue eyes and very fair skin. I vividly remember my teacher calling me up to the front of the room and then telling the class that I was a good specimen of the "Aryan physical ideal" thanks to my features. It was super uncomfortable to be used as a prop to explain that Nazis' view on racial superiority.

This teacher did that, but on steroids. What the hell was she thinking? How on earth could she have possibly thought that this was okay? Utterly bizarre.