A Message to Teachers on the Opening of School
The Friends of Simon Weisenthal Centre gave me permission to print the message that they sent to TDSB teachers. I think that it is very powerful.
As you're busy preparing your classroom - sharpening pencils, labelling books, creating bulletin boards, and planning lessons - we encourage you to keep the words of child psychologist, parent educator and classroom teacher Haim Ginott in the back of your mind . . .
Dear Teacher,
I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no man should witness:
Gas chambers built by learned engineers.
Children poisoned by educated physicians.
Infants killed by trained nurses.
Women and babies shot and burned by high school and college graduates.
So I am suspicious of education. My request is: Help your students become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated Eichmanns.
Reading, writing, arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human.
As you prepare your lessons for the year, be sure to engage the hearts of your students along with their minds. Give them examples of real people who chose to stand up and speak out, people who chose to create positive change in their world despite the obstacles or consequences. Tell your students the story of Irena Sendler, a Catholic woman who chose to rescue 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto during the occupation of Poland in World War II. She helped these children escape certain death, despite the fact that death was the consequence for rescuing these innocent victims.
Share the story of Terrence Roberts, a member of the Little Rock 9 - the first 9 black students to be integrated into a white school in Little Rock, Arkansas. Despite the very real threat of lynchings and extreme humiliation and abuse handed out by their classmates and teachers, Terrance and the Little Rock 9 attended the white school and forever shifted the colour lines that had so clearly been drawn prior to the Civil Rights movement.
Make sure your students know the name of Travis Price, a young man from Halifax, Nova Scotia who stood up for a male classmate who was bullied for wearing pink. Travis, along with 50 of his friends, wore pink in solidarity with that bullied student. That one action taken by Price and his classmates has now become an international day to counter bullying.
The facts and dates and numbers and procedures and expectations are all important. But they're not enough. You must reach the hearts of your students. You must provide your students with rich stories of diversity and choice, rights and responsibilities, citizenship and freedom. You must open up the doors to the world for your students so they can move beyond their backyard and see the limitless possibilities that lie before them. You must empower your students to see that they have choices, they can change the world for the better.
Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies
