Good morning, we start at 9 this morning, correct?

The Rationale in Teaching the Holocaust and the idea of 'Holocaust':

Our 4th grade curriculum has never truly felt like it has 'connected' to the students in the Oakridge district until we approach the unit on 'Human Geography'. The 9-year old students can explain the idea of 'push and pull' and some reasoning behind immigration of people, but very few have the understanding as to why their own family may have ever arrived on this soil.

So why this history? Why make a point to teach this to 4th and 5th graders?

This history will be the history of any group that demonstrates strength and resiliency in times of despair, sympathy towards those in their darkest moments, perhaps even empathy, and the most basic of human characteristics-care and concern for another human being.

Teaching the Holocaust strips the idea of our self-centeredness and holds us directly in the point of view of those whose lives were forever horrifically changed. These 9 and 10 year old students will not know of the Wannsee Conference, but they can know of Auschwitz. I can hope that these students do not learn of the term 'T4' or the Pyramid of Hate, but can understand the idea of writing with sympathy for the children of Theresienstadt and the millions of other innocents. These students can find within themselves the power of being an upstander, the long-lasting historical results of being a perpetrator, and the effect of how meekly being a bystander affects so many more around them .

Sharing the lessons of the Holocaust reaches beyond the idea of 'me' and yet helps them to to realize that the power of ONE can positively alter the lives of millions of others. Maybe there is that 'one' in this year's class. Or the next.

Jenn Fairweather , HEN 2017

4th Grade Teacher, Oakridge Public Schools