Teaching Holocaust and Human Behaviour (Canada)

This seminar brings together the Toronto Holocaust Museum and Facing History and Ourselves for a unique new educator learning opportunity. Our learning will include an exploration of Jewish immigration, history and heritage in Canada, as well as in-depth learning on the history of the Holocaust using the Museum as a classroom and hands-on sessions with classroom-ready resources and strategies.

Studying the Holocaust and human behaviour allows students to wrestle with the profound moral questions this history raises while fostering their skills in ethical and moral reasoning, critical analysis, empathy, and civic engagement—all of which are critical habits of mind for sustaining democracy.

In this four-day, in-person seminar, participants will:

• Explore an inspiring approach that embeds academic rigour, social-emotional learning, ethical reflection and skills for civil discourse. 
• Engage in exciting and multifaceted learning experiences that promote understanding for Jewish diversity, complexity, resilience and pride, and invite connections for diverse classrooms.
• Gain tools and strategies to take students safely in and safely out of difficult learning
• Learn scholarship and gain in-depth, classroom-ready resources to situate the history of the Holocaust within a long history of antisemitism, racism, eugenics, European colonization and post-WWI context.
• Gain resources, strategies and lesson ideas to help you humanize history and deepen learning on underrepresented narratives of the Holocaust
• Enhance your capacity to inspire ethical reflection and civic agency in students through the study of choices and human behaviour in times of injustice, and the fragility of democracy
• Increase your ability to facilitate respectful classroom discussions on issues such as bias, racism, antisemitism, propaganda and mass violence in a way that invites compassion, personal reflection and critical analysis.
• Take a site- based tour of historic Kensington Market with the Ontario Jewish Archives, and sit with founder Judy Perly over lunch at Free Times Cafe; Enjoy Harbord Bakery’s famous challah; learn with experienced facilitators from Azrieli Foundation Holocaust Memoirs Program, tour the Toronto Holocaust Museum, Fenster Gallery and more.
• Experience a learning approach and community that will support, inspire, engage and rejuvenate you.

Sessions will occur between 9:30AM - 3:30PM EDT each day.

Refreshments and lunches will be provided for each day of the seminar.  

Accommodation request forms will be emailed to participants once your registration has been confirmed. 

As event attendees may experience multiple chemical sensitivities, please refrain from wearing all perfumes, colognes, body sprays, etc. and use fragrance-free, unscented personal care products for the duration of our event.

Attendees will:

Become part of the Facing History educator network, with access to a rich slate of educator resources, including downloadable unit and lesson plans, study guides, and multimedia.

The seminar will take place at the Centre for Social Innovation (192 Spadina Avenue, Toronto) / Kensington Market, and the Sherman Campus / Toronto Holocaust Museum (4588 Bathurst St, North York, ON M2R 1W6, Canada)

More details to follow

Independent evaluation has shown that implementing Facing History’s approach improves students’ higher-order thinking skills, increases students’ civic efficacy and engagement with civic matters, and increases students’ tolerance for others who hold contrary views from their own.