Holocaust Initiative Brochure

Professional Learning for K-12 Educators on Effective Instruction of Difficult Topics

Interboro School District high-school English Literature teacher Noelle Ackland engages in a group discussion during an Initiative session.

Initiative professional learning session photos by John Pendygraft

The Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Education Initiative at Penn State enables K-12 educators to effectively teach difficult topics such as racism and human rights violations. The Initiative partners with school districts and other educational entities to offer research-based programming for educators throughout Pennsylvania and beyond. Participating educators join inquiry communities, explore interactive online modules, and engage with Penn State faculty and partners who share their expertise in historical and contemporary subjects.

The Initiative, which is part of the Hammel Family Human Rights Initiative at Penn State, collaborates with school districts and other partners to support educators as they and their students adopt an inquiry stance toward the challenges that impact their lives and communities. As they systematically investigate difficult topics, students develop their voice and sharpen vital life skills such as active listening and critical thinking (Clayton & Kilbane, 2020; Kreuzer & Dreesmann, 2017). Students grow their capacity for civic discourse surrounding complex social issues (Middaugh, 2019; Rubin et al., 2019) They can also gain insight into the human condition, cultivating authentic empathy toward others (Haas, 2020).

Inquiry empowers K-12 students to claim ownership of their learning (Darling-Hammond et al., 2020). Through the guidance of teachers who participate in the Initiative’s programs, students investigate questions that matter to them, then collect and critically analyze information from primary and secondary sources. Over time, students develop, refine, and justify their conclusions about the difficult topics they are investigating, choosing for themselves how to respond to their deepening insights. Through this process, students can develop their sense of agency and take informed action to strengthen their schools and communities (Molebash et al., 2019).

Annie Dampf, ninth-grade History and African American Studies teacher, Patti Pullin, ninth- and 10th--grade Math teacher, and Mike Lafferty, AP and ninth-grade World History teacher, explore ways to engage students in inquiry into difficult topics.

To support educators in guiding K-12 students’ inquiries into difficult topics, the Initiative creates and helps to sustain inquiry communities. Traditional professional development often fails because it is disconnected from teachers’ day-to-day work and rarely involves follow-up support (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017; Guskey & Yoon, 2009). In contrast, the Initiative’s high-quality professional learning is intensive and sustained (Desimone, 2009; Kennedy, 2016) to inform teachers’ practice and their work with students. Each of the Initiative’s programs integrates core characteristics of effective professional learning (Glickman & Burns, 2020; Learning Forward, 2011), including:

• Content-rich learning linked directly to classroom application

• Active participation in collaborative groups facilitated by professional learning experts

• Explicit connections to the real-world needs of teachers, students, and local contexts

• Positioning of teachers as knowledge creators with agency in their practice

To do so, the Initiative’s flagship programs engage teachers in a school year of inquiry-based professional learning, informed by the latest research and scholarship (e.g., Dana & Yendol-Hoppey, 2020; Willegems et al., 2017). The Initiative works with partners to customize each program to meet their educators’ and students’ needs. Most programs begin with a summer launch and continue with regular meetings throughout the school year. Educators experience the inquiry process by investigating their practice. They transfer their learning to engage students in inquiry. The program culminates in a celebration and sharing of learning that involves educators, K-12 students, and community members. A growing body of research illustrates how this approach can support teachers and students in creating transformational change in their schools and communities while fully addressing state standards, curriculum requirements, and teacher evaluation processes (e.g., Parkhouse et al., 2021; Wolkenhauer & Hooser, 2017).

Dorinda Danz, ninth-grade English Language Arts teacher, Christine Lenge, high-school English and Holocaust Studies teacher, Jim Kennedy, eighth-grade English Language Arts teacher, and Sheila Frank, ninth- and 10th-grade English Language Arts teacher, brainstorm ideas for boosting student engagement.

YEAR AT A GLANCE

INQUIRY COMMUNITIES FOCUSED ON DIFFICULT TOPICS

Customizing professional learning to meet local needs and individual participants’ needs is the core of the Initiative’s collaborative approach. The Initiative works closely with educational entities to tailor each program’s topical focus, duration, and structure. From the outset, Initiative personnel help participants identify what they need and want to accomplish. The Initiative also helps participants with one-on-one support to meet other professional requirements, such as preparing for teacher evaluations, designing lessons that address the content standards they already teach, and completing Student Performance Measures (SPMs) and/or earning Act 48 credits (for Pennsylvania educators).

Once a program structure has been established, the Initiative’s professional learning experts build and sustain inquiry communities of K-12 educators from any content area over one or more school years. These communities support educators as they implement their learning about content and pedagogy in their classrooms and schools (Rutten, 2021; Wolkenhauer & Hooser, 2020). They also provide the resources and professional guidance that teachers need to engage in powerful inquiries with their students about difficult topics (Butville et al., 2021)

The Initiative’s yearlong programs involve three cycles of inquiry. The year begins with a shared inquiry cycle, sparked by difficult topics educators are facing and guided by content, pedagogy, and professional learning experts. Participants simultaneously generate compelling questions for a cycle of inquiry about their individual practices. For example, after working with an Initiative expert to learn about the role of language in historical genocides, participants generate questions about how they use language in their teaching practice. In both inquiries, participants collect and analyze data, draw initial conclusions, take informed action to grow their practices, and share their findings with their colleagues and school community. Throughout the process, participants engage in critical reflection on current practices in relation to principles of educational equity and trauma-informed teaching. Ultimately, participants engage their students in inquiry on relevant difficult topics.

Although inquiry communities can be developed over varying lengths of time, the Initiative’s programs are most impactful when they convene educators to collaborate throughout an entire school year, either at the building level or across content areas and grade-level bands. The Initiative’s professional learning experts facilitate each program primarily face-to-face in school district buildings, while selected components are offered remotely. Beginning with one or two inquiry communities in each district, these initial programs are refined and expanded in subsequent school years. The table on the next page provides a sample outline of a yearlong program that could be tailored to assist a school district in achieving its goals.

YEARLONG PROGRAM

Before the program launches, the Initiative and its partner join forces to:

• Designate days and times for educators to participate (30-45 hours distributed across the summer and upcoming school year)

• Determine a budget that fits the district’s needs

• Identify opportunities for participating educators to meet professional requirements (e.g., teaching evaluations, SPMs, Act 48 hours)

• Invite one or more cohorts of 12-25 teachers within a building or other shared context to form inquiry communities to begin during the summer

• Design a customized, yearlong program focused on investigating the difficult topics that are most relevant to the district’s students and educators

SUMMER FALL WINTER/SPRING

Initiative personnel lead a program launch focused on:

• Introducing the process of inquiry

• Building a sustainable inquiry community

• Identifying the difficult topics that participants share in their teaching and practice

• Providing opportunities to learn and/or review foundational content in trauma-informed practices and educational equity related to the program

Initiative personnel meet with participants one-on-one to:

• Get to know their interests and needs related to integrating trauma-informed practices and educational equity into their classroom practices

• Identify difficult topics they teach or encounter individually

• Determine how the program can support them through:

o Building a strong inquiry community

o Meeting their needs and fulfilling professional requirements

o Connecting with the Initiative’s experts in content, pedagogy, and professional learning

o Designing inquiry-based, traumainformed units and lessons

o Accessing resources and curricular materials

o Providing ongoing support (e.g., one-on-one check-ins, co-planning, co-teaching, classroom support and observations)

Educators experience the process of inquiry by:

• Generating and refining their own wonderings about the difficult topics that they teach or encounter

• Collecting and analyzing data

• Considering how to integrate a trauma-informed lens and core concepts in educational equity

• Critically evaluating current practices and taking informed action

• Sharing insights from their Fall inquiries

Educators prepare to engage their students in inquiry by:

• Identifying difficult topics that matter to students within their curricula and classroom communities

• Working with Penn State faculty to deepen their content knowledge about difficult topics

• Exploring pedagogy that supports inquiry with students, including structured talk around difficult topics

Educators apply inquiry in their curricular content areas by:

• Designing inquiry-based, traumainformed units and lessons around difficult topics

• Evaluating the effectiveness of their inquiry-based teaching

• Sharing insights from their inquiries with students

Educators engage students in inquiry by helping them:

• Generate wonderings about difficult topics in their curriculum and/or that matter to them

• Collect and analyze data

• Critically evaluate information

• Engage in structured talk

• Take informed action

Students and educators share their learning with others through:

• Community-engaged events

• Presentations within their classrooms and inquiry communities

• Presentations for community members and district leaders

• Conferences

• Writing for publication

Initiative personnel continue to provide:

• Ongoing support for designing inquiry-based units and lessons

• Ongoing access to experts in content, pedagogy, and professional learning

• Additional resources and curricular materials

• Group and individual sessions in response to participant needs

THE INITIATIVE’S RESOURCES FOR EDUCATORS

Penn State Faculty and Internal Partners

Participating educators enjoy 360-degree support from Penn State’s unparalleled institutional resources. The Initiative’s affiliated faculty contribute expertise in teaching difficult social and historical topics, use of media in the classroom, trauma-informed pedagogy, equity and diversity, race and identity, the Holocaust, gender studies, human rights violations, international law, art education, and more. Educators connect with experts from the College of Education, the College of Liberal Arts, Penn State Law, the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications, the Center for Science and the Schools, the Jewish Studies Program, and the Humanities Institute.

Online Professional Learning Modules

Educators can access self-paced, free professional learning through the Initiative’s interactive online modules, such as Trauma-Informed Practices (holocaust-ed-initiative.psu.edu/course/trauma). The modules introduce educators and school personnel to research-based frameworks for inquiry-based learning and teaching difficult topics with a trauma-informed lens. They provide concrete examples and opportunities for critical reflection that help educators apply their professional learning within their local contexts and roles. The modules also connect educators with a wealth of resources to use and share. Certified Pennsylvania educators who complete the Initiative’s modules and provide their PPIDs

will earn continuing

Teacher Advisory Council

education hours that satisfy Act 48 requirements.

The Initiative collaborates with the Teacher Advisory Council (TAC) in order to refine its innovative, inquiry-based approach to difficult-topics professional learning in ways that are relevant to K-12 teachers across the United States and beyond. The TAC serves as a distinctive platform from which K-12 educators can influence practices and policies pertaining to professional learning. TAC offers opportunities for teachers to collaborate with other educators passionate about teaching difficult topics, provide incisive feedback on the Initiative’s programming, contribute to a rapidly growing model for professional learning.

Katy Newlon, fifth-grade teacher, Casey White, elementary Art, Lauren Irby of the Kindergarten Academy, and Emily Catanese, elementary school Reading Specialist, discuss opportunities for collaboration.

INITIATIVE STAFF

Boaz Dvir directs the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Education Initiative at Penn State. He served as operations manager at the University of Florida’s Lastinger Center for Learning, which provides professional development to educators in several states. An award-winning filmmaker, Dvir tells the stories of ordinary people who transform into trailblazers. They include an inner-city schoolteacher who emerges as a disruptive innovator and a national model (Discovering Gloria); a World War II flight engineer who transforms into the leader of a secret operation to prevent a second Holocaust (A Wing and a Prayer); a truck driver who becomes an effective child-protection activist (Jessie’s Dad); and a Holocaust survivor who sets out to kill his father’s Nazi executioner (Cojot).

Dr. Danielle Butville, education program specialist, is a former classroom teacher whose work explores inquiry as a stance and as pedagogy in K-12 classrooms. Her current research examines practitioner inquiry and its impacts on preservice teachers’ dispositions and stance towards teaching once they enter the classroom. To the Initiative Butville contributes expertise in the integration of school curricula with students’ curiosities to create inquiry communities in classrooms. In recognition of her student-centered scholarship, Butville was recently awarded a grant from the Conference on English Educators (CEE) and the James Moffett Memorial Award by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Dr. Logan Rutten, education program specialist, is a teacher educator whose research examines practitioner inquiry as a form of professional learning for educators across the career span and particularly within school-university partnerships such as professional development schools. In recognition of his contributions to teacher education, Dr. Rutten was recently awarded the Robert E. Stevenson Memorial Scholarship by the Association of Teacher Educators (ATE) and the Arthur Blumberg/Edward Pajak Memorial Scholarship by the Council of Professors of Instructional Supervision (COPIS). Dr. Rutten currently serves as Associate Editor of the Cambridge Handbook of Research, Policy, and Practice in School-University Partnerships and as Co-Chair of Communications for the National Association for Professional Development Schools (NAPDS).

Stacy Sterndale, education program specialist, is a former classroom teacher in secondary biological science and environmental science. Stacy earned her B.S. in Environmental Science from Albright College in 2011 and interned with the School for Field Studies in wildlife management. She earned her teaching certification from Juniata College in 2014. Her areas of educational interest are designing and facilitating experiential learning, cultivating student autonomy through flipped classroom approaches, and creating collaborative classroom communities through inquiry. Stacy coordinated a professional learning community inquiry with fellow faculty members to explore the value of blending learning approaches for secondary students. She has presented at the Pennsylvania Science Teachers Association conference and has studied and worked in Brazil, Canada, Australia, and Kenya. Currently, Stacy is working towards a master’s degree in biological sciences with Clemson University.

Dr. Erin Morgart is a former elementary classroom teacher. She studied elementary education and educational leadership in Arizona before moving to Pennsylvania to pursue her doctorate in curriculum and supervision at Penn State University. Her areas of research and interest within teacher education are pre-service teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching, lesson study, reflection, and supervision practices. She currently works in the College of Education as a student teaching supervisor in the Elementary and Early Childhood Education program.

Guadalupe Kasper is the Liaison for the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Initiative at Penn State Berks. She is a faculty member at Penn State Berks in the Elementary and Early Childhood Education (EECE) Program. She teaches Curriculum and Instruction 280, “Teaching English Language Learners” for the EECE Program at Berks. Additionally, Guadalupe teaches courses in Sociology and Anthropology at the campus. Guadalupe is trained in Anthropology and has engaged in educational and ethnographic research around bilingual and family literacy as well as home and school community collaborations. As faculty, she is an active member and mentor of the Social Justice Collaborative and the Antiracism Across the Curriculum Initiative at Berks. Both of these provide collaborative support for faculty teaching race and racism across all disciplines as well as support students in their own inquiry around matters of social justice. In addition to teaching at Berks, Guadalupe is the lead administrator for the Penn State Berks Educational Partnership Program (PEPP). PEPP is a college preparatory partnership program that combines academic, career, and social support for high school students in the Reading School District. She belongs to and supports a number of campus-wide initiatives around Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion including the support of campus community engagement and local service-learning initiatives. She also teaches part-time as an Adult ESL Instructor for the Literacy Council of Reading and Berks County and serves as school board member in the Wilson School District in Berks County.

Dr. Ryan Lewis is a classroom teacher, with experience working in the special education sector of K-12 public schools. During his education career, he has worked in settings which range from elementary learning support to life skills support at the secondary level. Ryan completed his doctoral degree in educational leadership (2020) with a focus on examining the well-being and self-efficacy of special education practitioners. He is an advocate of providing scaffolded support for individuals and groups who may be otherwise marginalized. Ryan brings continuous in-service classroom experience, with a background in academia, to the Initiative. He leads with a collaborative approach to identify areas of needed development, while incorporating strength-based analytical approaches, to facilitate progress.

Elham Hajesmaeili is an artist, researcher, and art educator in central Pennsylvania. She received a B.F.A. in Handicrafts from Shiraz University, Iran, in 2006, an M.A. in Art Studies from the University of Art, Tehran, Iran, in 2010, and an M.F.A. in Painting & Drawing from the Pennsylvania State University, U.S, in 2017. She has held multiple group and solo exhibitions in Iran and United States. Currently, she is a dual-titled Ph.D. candidate in art education and women’s, gender, & sexuality studies at Penn State. Her teaching experiences in two geographical contexts shape her understanding of feminist pedagogy as a relational concept that must be acknowledged and practiced to make classrooms constructive environments where learning is a mutually rewarding experience.

Jin Han is a Ph.D. student in curriculum & instruction with an emphasis in language, culture, and society and in comparative and international education with an emphasis in gender and identity. She earned a master’s degree in translation and interpretation and a second master’s in humanities and social thought. Her research interests include the use of language and cultural conceptualizations that underpin the learning and using of language. She is also interested in cultural and linguistic translation. Jin has conducted research about the translation of global feminism into local feminist activities and the dynamics of the exchange of local and global ideas. She is currently researching the intersection of identity, gender, and literacy practices of Chinese women.

INITIATIVE AFFILIATED FACULTY

Dr. Eliyana Adler is an historian of the modern Jewish experience in Eastern Europe with particular interests in the history of education, religion, gender studies, Holocaust historiography, and memory. Her first book, In Her Hands: The Education of Jewish Girls in Tsarist Russia (2011) traced the emergence and development of formal schooling for Jewish girls in pre-revolutionary Russia. More recently, she published Survival on the Margins: Polish Jewish Refugees in the Wartime Soviet Union (2020), about the experiences and memory of a large group of Polish Jews who spent WWII in the unoccupied regions of the USSR. At present, Adler is researching memorial books as well as working on other related projects.

Dr. C Daryl Cameron is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology and a senior research associate in the Rock Ethics Institute. He completed a summer post-doctoral appointment at the Duke University Kenan Institute for Ethics and was a Fellow at the Stanford University Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE). Cameron is also a member of the Moral Psychology Research Group, an interdisciplinary group of psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers who study moral cognition. Dr. Cameron’s research and teaching focus on the psychological processes involved in empathy and moral decision-making. Much of his work examines motivational factors that shape empathic emotions and behaviors toward others. In his second line of research, Cameron uses tools from social cognitive psychology—including implicit measurement and mathematical modeling—to understand individual differences in moral intuitions and empathy for pain. Dr. Cameron’s research has been funded by multiple grants from the National Science Foundation. His work has been published in venues such as the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychological Science, and Personality and Social Psychology Review, and in popular outlets such as the New York Times. His research on moral judgments about implicit racial bias received the Morton Deutsch Award for Best Article from the International Society for Justice Research. To learn more about his research, please visit the Empathy and Moral Psychology Lab web page (emplab.la.psu.edu).

Dr. Christian Connell is an Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Studies and Director of the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network at the Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on individual, family, and system-level outcomes of youth who have been maltreated or involved in the child welfare and other child-serving systems, as well as the effectiveness of community-based interventions to reduce adverse outcomes associated with maltreatment and trauma. He has been involved in numerous state-level efforts to support the development and dissemination of trauma-informed care practices, particularly focused on the needs of children and families and is the co-author of the Child Trauma Screen, a publicly available, brief trauma screen intended for use in child-serving systems. His research has been supported by numerous federal grants and state contracts.

Dr. John Christman is Professor of Philosophy, Political Science, and Women’s Studies at Penn State and Director of the Penn State Humanities Institute. He has published widely in the areas of social and political philosophy and ethics, including Social and Political Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction.

Dr. Russell Frank worked as a reporter and editor at newspapers in California and Pennsylvania for 13 years before joining the journalism faculty of the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State. A folklorist by training (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania), Frank’s primary interest is in the telling of true stories, orally and in writing. He has twice been a Fulbright Scholar, in Ukraine in 2012-13, and in Greece in 2019-20. During his time in Greece, he was researching the lives of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East, and Africa until the COVID pandemic forced his early departure.

Dr. Kathleen Hill, associate professor of science education, is a former environmental scientist and science teacher who currently works with scientists and engineers to design and implement STEM education outreach programs that bridge cutting-edge science and engineering research and K-12 classrooms. She worked in environmental consulting for 10 years, which involved a wide variety of projects across the desert southwest region of the United States. She then transitioned to teaching middle and high school science and served as a teacher leader on the NASA Phoenix Student Internship Program as well as coordinator for a schoolwide middle school science and engineering fair. Her research has focused on teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and specialized content knowledge.

Dr. David Hunter is a professor of statistics at Penn State University. He served as head of the Department of Statistics from 2012 to 2018 and has been heavily involved in developing Penn State’s data science programs. He is a fellow of both the American Statistical Association and the Institute for Mathematical Statistics and is best known for work in three areas: Statistical algorithms, most notably the class known as MM algorithms; statistical modeling of networks; and mixture models, particularly finite mixtures in which the component distributions are not parametrically specified.

Dr. Lauren Kooistra, Associate Research Professor of Humanities and Associate Director of the Humanities Institute at Penn State, earned a Ph.D. in Music Education from Penn State University with a dissertation entitled The Experiences of Two Young Children in Informal Piano Lesson Settings: Expressions of Meaning and Value. Holding previous degrees in both Piano Performance (B.M., Gordon College) and Piano Performance and Pedagogy (M.M., Westminster Choir College), Lauren is interested in the ways that young children express and develop their musicianship within the contexts of their lived experience, with implications for learning and teaching. Her research focuses on the application of these aspects within piano lesson settings, and her scholarship has been internationally published and presented.

Dr. Tiyanjana Maluwa is the H. Laddie Montague Chair in Law. He previously worked as the legal counsel of the OAU (now African Union) and, subsequently, as the legal adviser to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Prior to joining the AU, he was Professor of Law at the University of Cape Town, and Extraordinary Professor of Law at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Professor Maluwa served as the inaugural director of the Penn State School of International Affairs from 2007 to 2015. In 2017, he was a Senior Fellow at the Kolleg-Forschegruppe (KFG) based at Humboldt University, Berlin. In August 2021, he was elected a member of the Institute of International Law. He holds a Ph.D. degree in International Law from the University of Cambridge.

Dr. Scott Alan Metzger is an associate professor of social studies education at Penn State and a scholar of history education. He was a high-school teacher before earning his Ph.D. from Michigan State University and now works with undergraduate and graduate students in secondary (7-12) social-studies teacher certification and courses on history and social studies topics. With research expertise in history teaching, learning, and curriculum, Dr. Metzger’s work focuses on what and how people learn and think about the past, including media/ technology and classroom discussion of social and historical difficult topics.

Dr. Ashley Patterson is an associate professor of education with expertise in equity and diversity. Dr. Patterson’s work in the educational field began as an elementary level inclusive special educator. She is committed to preparing educators who take up a critical lens to working with children and best serving their needs while seeking ways to deconstruct inequities woven into the US’s existing public school system and structure. Broadly, Dr. Patterson’s research interests consider intersections between identity and education, considering the dialogic relationship that exists as the ways we think about ourselves impact our educational experiences while our educational experiences impact the ways we think about ourselves. Employing an intersectional approach to considering identity, Dr. Patterson’s research examines race conjointly with a host of other contextually important and influential identity markers.

Jon Price is the Assistant Director of Academic Affairs at Penn State York. He also teaches History and Political Science. His classes include early and modern United States History, Western Civilization, World War two, Pennsylvania State Government, and American National Government. In addition, Jon is an academic adviser in the Division of Undergraduate Studies. Jon’s area of expertise includes late 19th and 20th century American Labor History and Pennsylvania History. He previously worked in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and the Department of Environmental Protection as a policy adviser on labor, agriculture, local government, and environmental issues. He currently serves as the Chairperson of his township’s planning commission and is an advocate for environmental protection, public education, and historic preservation in his native Lancaster County.

Dr. Belén Rodríguez Mourelo serves as professor of Spanish and head of the Division of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Penn State Berks. Her research focuses on the search for identity. Her doctorate in Modern Languages from Universidad Complutense in Madrid (cum laude), analyzed the search for identity in the works of African American writers during the Harlem Renaissance. Later, as a scholar in the United States, she expanded her investigations to include Afro-Hispanic writing, including a comparison between the poetry of Langston Hughes and the Cuban artist, Nicolás Guillén. Focusing on Cuba consolidated her fascination with, and passion for, Cuban studies, and linked her family’s story (a grandfather who lived and died in Havana) to that of writers in exile. Dr. Rodríguez Mourelo has published three books: Encounters in Exile: Themes in the Narrative of the Cuban Diaspora (2006); Cuban Writing Between Two Centuries (2018); and the edited anthology Identidad y Postnacionalismo en la Cultura Cubana (2019) with Laura Alonso Gallo. Additionally, she has published two books of translation and numerous articles in national and international journals.

Katy Newlon, fifth-grade teacher, discusses her spring inquiry plan with Initiative facilitator Stacy Sterndale.

About the Initiative

The Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Education Initiative at Penn State enables K-12 educators to effectively teach difficult topics. The Initiative offers sustained and customized professional learning programs supported by online learning modules and Penn State faculty and partners. Using an inquiry-based, trauma-informed approach, the Initiative’s programs help K-12 teachers use compelling questions to drive their professional growth and students’ learning. In each of its programs, the Initiative’s professional learning experts guide teachers to foster empathy, critical thinking, agency, and civic-discourse skills among their students by applying inquiry-based approaches to the instruction of difficult topics. Over time, these approaches can transform schools and communities by revealing opportunities to design more equitable education systems where all children can learn, grow, and thrive.

For more information email us or visit our website: HumanRightsInitiative@psu.edu | bellisario.psu.edu/Human-Rights

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Wolkenhauer, R., & Hooser, A. (2020). Becoming clinically grounded teacher educators: Inquiry communities in clinical teacher preparation. Journal of Teacher Education, 72(2), 168-179.

Mark Avitabile, Interboro Director of STEM, Professional Learning, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and Patti Pullin, ninth- and 10th-grade Math teacher, share perspectives on collaborating with the Math Department.