Presentation
Teacher and educator exchange
Speaker: Adelina Hetnar-Michaldo, ICEAH, Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
The main objectives of this project that gathered teachers from Poland and from the Netherlands was for them to share their experiences in teaching about the Holocaust and get to know each other, so that this might lead to joint educational projects in the future.
The visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and Kraków
The first stage of the Polish-Dutch seminar for educators took place between 19-23 October 2016. The seminar was the first meeting of 21 teachers, education specialists, museum and memorial site workers in Poland and the Netherlands, held as part of this project. During the seminar, participants became acquainted with, and also themselves presented, examples from both countries of good practices in teaching about the Holocaust and the Second World War. Particular emphasis was placed on education at memorial sites, the preparation and summary of visits, educational travelling exhibitions and innovative didactic solutions for teaching about the Holocaust, such as peer education and online lessons.
An integral part of the project were workshops and lectures combined with discussions, which allowed for the free exchange of experiences between educators, and helped in working out universal methods of working with young people of various ages and requirements.
Through many debates, presentations and discussions, teachers found that their educational problems were quite similar between the two countries. “It was about radical attitudes of students and difficulties in reaching them with the history that happened long ago, something that for them is the remote past.” Peer education and the use of other tools like the Internet were evoked to try to find solutions to these educational problems.