Philly first major city in country to welcome innovative Penn State human rights education program

PHILADELPHIA — “The City of Brotherly Love” is the first metropolitan area to welcome the Initiative, helping K-12 educators effectively teach difficult topics such as racism and human rights violations.

The Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Education Initiative wrapped up its first yearlong program in Philadelphia’s Interboro School District. This innovative, nonpartisan effort has provided 20 local educators with professional learning and tools to teach difficult topics in an age-appropriate, potentially transformative manner.

We want to build on this, to keep the momentum going and make adjustments as needed.

Christopher "Reed" Stubbe, Assistant Principal of Glenolden Middle School in the Interboro School District

“We want to build on this, to keep the momentum going and make adjustments as needed,” said program participant Christopher “Reed” Stubbe, assistant principal at Interboro’s Glenolden Middle School. “I want to bring more people in and see if we can make the classroom a safer and more candid place for the kids.”

Polarization among the students is one of the challenges the Initiative is helping Stubbe and his colleagues face.

In recent years, he said, students have often become desensitized and have gone “nuclear” with their reactions during arguments.

The Initiative works with the educators to enable students to think critically and empathically about difficult topics and issues, while also gaining an understanding of these issues and the impact they have.

Program participant Edward Kloss, a social studies teacher at Glenolden Middle School, uses the Initiative’s process of helping students debate and discuss topics they disagree with in a civil, respectful way.

“I let everyone choose a side and I say ‘Okay, you said you’re pro this and you’re anti this, well guess what? This time you’re on the anti-side,’” Kloss said. “You have to play devil’s advocate so that students look at the issues from other perspectives.”

After collaborating with other educators involved in the program on how they can help students see different angles on disagreements, Kloss started pushing his students to back up their arguments with evidence.

“This approach really just does a good job of having everybody at least recognize where that person is coming from regardless of whether or not they agree with them,” Stubbe said.

Getting his students to see a different viewpoint from their own is the biggest challenge, according to Kloss, because many have only been exposed to one story.

One thing that keeps me up at night is how can I break that cycle.

Ed Kloss, social studies teacher at Glenolden Middle School in the Interboro School District

“One thing that keeps me up at night is how can I break that cycle,” Kloss said.

The Initiative’s impact is already being felt within Interboro School District with teachers and administrators reporting that having an opening to talk about these difficult topics is exposing kids to things that are hard to talk about in an effective and safe way,” Kloss said.

With the Initiative’s help, Kloss and Stubbe are taking the first steps to expand the classroom beyond its standard borders.

“With internet and social media being in the classroom now, we have to adapt and change too,” Stubbe said, “and here, it can begin with us.”