Although I most likely won’t be teaching about the Holocaust in kindergarten, this training gave some great insights into teaching history that can be applied to any topic. With Martin Luther King Day coming up, this was helpful to learn about.
One thing that was stressed in the training was to avoid comparisons of pain. When we recall events in history such as the holocaust, we sometimes tend to compare the suffering from one persons or event’s account to another, creating a misconception that one suffered more than the other. Instead, we need to realize that in unfortunate events in our history, all suffering that occurred was painful. Another good point that was made was that we need to strive for a balance in which perspective informs us. In history, there are so many perspectives of what happened, we need to take them all into consideration. In history, people played many different roles and each role explains a different side of the story. For example, the participants in the event of the holocaust can be separated into four different categories: victims, perpetrators, rescuers, and bystanders. Each of these groups had their own individual thinking that was responsible for their actions, motives, and decisions, and by examining that, we can get a wider understanding of what happened and why it may have happened that way. It’s important that we remember this and teach this to our students when teaching history. Something that I took away that I find important when teaching history of any topic is to provide students with context. It is easy to forget that students may not know or understand what was different during times in our history. What will bring a better understanding of the history we are teaching to the students is to let them know what the world was like then. For example, when teaching the holocaust, it’s important to teach students that during that time there was also a world war, people were attempting to emigrate from Europe to the United States, and the world did not have the technology that we have today. Providing students with context of the history will answer many questions that the students may have and might explain misconceptions.