My students just finished up reading The Diary of Anne Frank (stage adaption) and we are getting ready to read our novels for the Holocaust unit we are studying. It has been so much fun with the students reading, using their acting chops to provide voices, inflection and emotion to the words of Anne Frank. However, I have began to wonder how to develop lessons that will provide a safe in and a safe out for my students.
The Holocaust is a difficult topic to teach because my students are further removed from it then previous generations. Even I am closer to its horrific events and I am barely a decade older than my students. Being such a horrible time in the world's history, I constantly question what can and can't be shown/told to my students. They are in 8th grade and have the capability of seeing and understanding the Holocaust, but at the same time their abstract thought process is still developing and concretely they see the wrong and the necessity of respecting humankind, yet the difficult material can create a difficult atmosphere and I struggle with how I can provide the appropriate material and still make them feel okay when we leave the classroom for the day.
My students are very inquisitive about the Holocaust and want to know as much as they can. But I hesitate in giving them all the information because I do feel protective of them. I don't want my students to necessarily take the weight of the world on their shoulders, but I do want them to realize they do have a role in it. The biggest thing they can do is stand up for each other when adversity is being acted out on each other. Yet, how do I do this without truly representing the Holocaust and its horrors in detail, but still provide a safety net for my students?
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