The Initiative earns prestigious National Endowment for the Humanities grant

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Education Initiative at Penn State has won a prestigious National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant to work with 30 teachers from around the country on sharpening their classroom skills.

The initiative will launch the “Making Holocaust and Genocide Education Relevant Through Inquiry and Classroom Application” program in June with a two-week institute for Holocaust and genocide educators.

“We customize our programs to meet our partners’ needs. We’re honored to team up with the NEH to support middle- and high-school teachers as they explore new ways to engage their students,” said project director Boaz Dvir, the initiative’s founding director and an assistant professor in the Donald P. Belliario Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State. “As the grandson of Holocaust survivors, I believe the effective instruction of these and other difficult historical topics can help teachers and students draw contemporary lessons and gain valuable insight into the human condition.”

The institute’s first week will take place mostly on Penn State’s University Park campus. It will include a field trip to Philadelphia, where the participants will tour the Horwitz-Wasserman Holocaust Memorial Plaza and visit the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History.

The second week and the rest of the nearly five-month program will be held virtually.

“Knowledge is necessary but not sufficient for leading responsible classroom investigations of topics such as the Holocaust,” said project co-director Logan Rutten, an initiative educational program specialist. “In addition to deepening their understandings, this institute will offer teachers strategies, resources and ongoing support as they plan for, implement and reflect on their teaching of difficult topics.”

The team working with teachers selected for the program includes three Penn State faculty members (Dvir, Kobi Kabalek, an assistant professor in the College of the Liberal Arts, and Scott Metzger, an associate professor in the College of Education) and three staff members associated with the initiative (Rutten, Danielle Butville, Stacy Sterndale and Rocco Zinobile). In addition, two Pennsylvania educators (Jackie Kemper and Andrew Warren) will help participants explore pedagogical approaches and build lesson plans and other classroom applications.

“Teaching about the Holocaust can be a challenge for educators as it is a difficult subject, but this institute will provide the necessary framework as well as pedagogical methods for educators to implement in their classroom,” said Kemper, a social studies teacher in York, Pennsylvania, and a U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Teacher Fellow. “We hope that the participants will gain a greater understanding of how to teach the Holocaust using inquiry to assist their students in answering difficult questions.”

Based in the Bellisario College, the Holocaust Education Initiative is part of the Hammel Family Human Rights Initiative at Penn State. It provides intensive, trauma-informed professional learning to help educators teach a variety of difficult topics.

Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at neh.gov.