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A Mandate to Educate
OUR COMMUNITY
Students from Ann Arbor Christian School tour HMC.
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Ruth Bergman
COURTESY OF HMC
Mandate A to Educate
HMC has transformed the way Michigan students learn about the Holocaust.
ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY CONTRIBUTING WRITER
When the state of Michigan passed a mandate in 2016 that required students to receive education about genocide, including but not limited to the Holocaust and Armenian genocide, Holocaust studies were significantly impacted for thousands of educators and students alike.
“All school districts have to make choices about what they teach,” says Ruth Bergman, the Holocaust Memorial Center’s director of education. “The mandate was really created to ensure that all students could have appropriate Holocaust and genocide education.”
The passing of the mandate, Bergman says, helped ensure this crucial learning “wouldn’t fall through the cracks.”
Now, Michigan’s genocide education mandate requires six hours of Holocaust education for students in eighth through 12th grades. “It adds an incentive for teachers to spend the right amount of time on this subject,” Bergman says.
For many Jewish students, especially those who may be grandchildren or great-grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, the subject hits close to home. To ensure that both teachers and students can adequately navigate this difficult and highly emotional topic, crucial resources like the Holocaust Memorial Center step in to guide schools.
“When you’re talking about genocide, how do you approach it safely and accurately?” Bergman says. “How do you make sure students are getting the right information that’s age-appropriate?”
This, Bergman says, is where Michigan’s genocide education mandate significantly opened the doors to better access and learning resources to continue teaching today’s youth about the Holocaust. “The mandate gave us that entrance to be able to talk to schools, teachers and superintendents about teaching the Holocaust appropriately.”
IMMEDIATE IMPACT
Michigan’s genocide education mandate changed the course of the state’s Holocaust education capabilities for the good. The Holocaust Memorial Center was able to greatly expand its content services, increasing support and lesson plans for Michigan teachers, specifically.
The museum was also able to hire an outreach manager to boost communication between the museum and schools across Michigan. “The outreach manager talked to every school district in the state to let them know that we are available to help them and to train them to teach the Holocaust appropriately,” Bergman says.
The first step was to create workshops to train teachers how to use literature to teach the Holocaust, Bergman says, which is often one of the initial ways youth are exposed to the genocide that killed 6 million Jews. “Many students’ first exposure to the Holocaust is actually not through social studies,” she said, explaining that books tend to take precedence.
The museum also beefed up its online content that teachers can pull from for lesson plans. Additionally, it created various accommodations to those lessons that can be used for English-language learners or for students in special education.
Jennifer Sepetys, a social studies teacher at West Bloomfield High school who teaches global studies of genocide and world history, was one of many educators who participated in a professional development program from Echoes and Reflections instructors at the Holocaust Memorial Center, which she completed a year after the passing of the mandate.
“The program provides training and materials to middle school and high school teachers for teaching the Holocaust,” Sepetys explains. “The mandate offered more opportunities for teachers to receive training on Holocaust education, and now there are more programs and webinars available for teachers who would like ongoing professional development as well.”
Jennifer Sepetys FACING THE HOLOCAUST
Though West Bloomfield High School’s genocide course was offered before the mandate was passed, the mandate made learning about the Holocaust more accessible (with the addition of ongoing support and increased professional development for educators). For Sepetys, she has seen the real-world impact of the importance of both learning about and preventing genocides.
“Students who learn about the Holocaust in my high school class reflect on what happened much differently than younger students,” Sepetys says. “As students mature, they think more critically about how and why it happened and what actions need to be taken to ensure it does not happen again.”
As part of their Holocaust education, West Bloomfield High School students (among many others) visit the Holocaust Memorial Center to hear survivor testimonies and face the Holocaust head-on.
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Brennden Bernard, HMC education associate, leading a Virtual Museum Experience. He is playing a video of a Holocaust survivor while he prepares to show his PowerPoint presentation. During the lesson, he is providing context to survivor videos and artifacts, etc., shared during the session.
OUR COMMUNITY
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“One of the things that we know about Holocaust education is that it’s not just about teaching the history lesson,” Bergman explains. “It’s for students to understand that the Holocaust didn’t simply happen, but that people made it happen.”
In emphasizing the notion of choice, Bergman says the museum aims to teach youth that people have the ability to stand up or speak out when they see hatred and can be a “vehicle of change” in their community. “The Holocaust is a great example of when that didn’t happen,” she says, “and also when it did happen.”
EDUCATING ONLINE
In the age of COVID-19, when museum access was temporarily limited due to pandemic restrictions and shutdowns, the Holocaust Memorial Center had to think outside of the box to create accessible ways for teachers and students to access Holocaust education. Since the 2016 passing of the genocide mandate, a pivot to virtual education was one of the biggest changes.
In pre-pandemic times, the Holocaust Memorial Center saw 35,000 students a year walk through its doors to learn about the genocide. To continue these field trips in a COVID-safe manner, the museum developed a Virtual Museum Experience, or VME, that allows students and teachers to learn about the Holocaust from the safety or their homes or classroom.
Each VME session lasts 45 minutes and is held over Zoom or Google Meet. During the session, students watch Holocaust survivor testimony videos, view artwork created by survivors and learn about different artifacts related to the genocide. Since launching in January, the Holocaust Memorial Center’s virtual program has engaged more than 6,500 students statewide.
Additionally, lesson plans can be customized with different themes that teachers can choose from. These include propaganda, choice and responsibility, resistance, the Final Solution and more. After a teacher expresses interest in scheduling a VME, a Holocaust Memorial Center educator reaches out to discuss learning goals and how to tailor the session to that classroom.
While the way students receive their Holocaust education continues to change in an increasingly digital world that is now highly mindful of health and safety as well, the core lessons stay the same. “The lessons about individual responsibility and dangers of silence will always be important,” Bergman explains. “What changes sometimes is the delivery system.”
In the five years since the passing of Michigan’s genocide education mandate, the past year was arguably its most crucial throughout a time of rising antisemitism.
“Whether someone is learning about the Holocaust virtually or in-person, those are all effective ways of having an impactful experience,” Bergman says, “and taking those lessons with them through their lives.”
Students from Lansing Christian School visited the museum to learn about the Holocaust.
— HMC’S DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION RUTH BERGMAN
