Facing History and Ourselves is a program that was created 32 years ago by Margot Stern Strom at Brookline Middle School.  She was an adventurous eighth-grade teacher who decided to challenge the system, herself, and her students. From its humble beginnings, the Facing History and Ourselves program is now taught in more than 120 countries, with more than 25,000 trained educators reaching about 1.8 million students annually.  The success of the institute is described by Strom as a combination of many elements: “It is an incubator of good teaching, a book publisher, a place where adults reflect on and discuss their teaching, and a way of connecting people within schools, within communities, and across time". It is being taught for the first time at Westborough High School by Mr. Greg Gallagher in the fall of 2008.  The course is being offered as a semester long senior elective.  Out of 283 seniors, more than 100 students signed up to take the course with Mr. Gallagher in the first year of its offering. 

September 1, 2008

Dear Parent:

I hope to continue the reach and impact of the Facing History and Ourselves course in several meaningful ways with your help.  

First, with community support, I hope to create a foundation to fund an annual Facing History and Ourselves competition where scholarships would be awarded to several students each year.   The competition would consist of teams of students who would create websites or blogs that focus on individuals, past or present, who have made a difference in the world.   The competition would be open to all WHS students who have taken the course during the academic year.

Second, anyone who has watched the movie Freedom Writers knows the power of the pen and the ability of students to attract nationally known speakers for a good cause.   One of our annual efforts will be for students in the first semester course to invite interesting persons to visit the high school and speak to the community.

Third, establish collaboration with a local college or university in order to increase resources, technology and expertise.  For example, Clark University has one of the largest Holocaust collections in central Massachusetts.

Finally, I would like to call your attention to Thomas L. Friedman, who in his New York Times bestseller book, The World is Flat, explains that the technology advances of the 21st Century have created the ability of billions of people to instantly do business with each other - thus virtually eliminating trade and political barriers around the globe.     This he tells us has created a "flat" or "connected" world like never before.   According to Friedman, this new reality calls for a greater understanding of both the threats and the opportunities of globalization.    He sounds the alarm, that technical and innovative training and education is clearly needed in order for the U.S. worker to compete in the "new middle class" that has been created by the digital revolution.    Friedman also points out, with some urgency, that the United States currently does not have the capacity to respond to this dynamic change.  Through the extensive use of technology, the course seeks to combine the lessons of the past and the need for personal ethics in order to assist students in meeting some of the challenges of the "flat" world they face today.

Although I have been in touch with many high schools about the Facing History course, the programs that have fired my imagination are the ones being taught at Boston Latin High School and Hudson High School.  I would welcome any suggestions to improve the course that you would like to share with me.   Here are a few websites that demonstrate the power and importance of this program.

If you would like to join Friends of Facing History at Westborough High School, please email me at obrienroad@msn.com.  We certainly could use your help in setting up resources and speakers for the course and establishing the scholarship.

Sincerely, 

Greg Gallagher

IMPORTANT LINKS OF INTEREST

National Facing History website: http://www.facinghistory.org/campus/reslib.nsf/

Facing History website for Boston Latin students: http://www.learntoquestion.com/jumpsite/

Facing History Tribute to Sheldon Seevak who started program at Boston Latin: http://www.facinghistory.org/campus/reslib.nsf/all/9ADCD8C15EA4976D8525733E0063B5F5?Opendocument

Boston Latin website: http://www.bls.org/

Website used by Boston Latin teachers: http://teacherweb.com/index.html

Facing History and Ourselves

 In order to promote greater awareness of the societal issues students will face in today’s world, this course will examine bias, racism, and prejudice in a historical context.  Through their study of intolerance, genocide, and the Holocaust, students will be able to make the fundamental correlation between history and the moral and ethical choices they are forced to make on a daily basis in their own lives.  Now, more than ever, we live and work in an interdependent global community.  This course seeks to provide students with a greater awareness of the diversity of that community, their place in society and their responsibility to it.  We will also look at structure and rationale for our democratic form of government and the role we can play as individuals in that democracy.  The instructor will use a wide range of academic research, film, guest speakers, projects, and class discussion to achieve the goals of the course.

 I.  Identity - Identity is the introductory unit of the Facing History course.  The focus for the unit is on how both individual and national identities are formed, as well as how these identities influence behavior and decision-making.

II.  Membership - The second unit focuses on the processes of the national and collective identity that help people connect but also contribute to misunderstanding, stereotyping and conflict. Students learn that the way a nation defines itself affects the choices it makes, including the choice to exclude those who do not fit a nation's concept of itself. They will see that membership can be a tool for constructive and destructive purposes.

III.  History - This unit examines the primary historical case study of the Holocaust and Human Behavior, as well as other instances of intolerance, mass violence and genocide, in each case exploring the small steps that led to these difficult periods in history. By focusing on these histories, students will grasp the complexities of the past, while also connecting it to their lives today.

IV.  Judgment, Memory & Legacy - As students confront the terrible human atrocities of the Holocaust and other historical case studies, they will explore the meaning of concepts such as guilt, responsibility, and judgment and what those concepts mean in our world today. Students will also discover that one way of taking responsibility for the past is to preserve its memory. They will explore the importance of monuments and memorials as communal gestures of remembering, of acknowledging injustice, and of honoring individuals and groups who have suffered.

v.  Choosing To Participate - This unit focuses on how understanding the past can connect with the issues of today. Contemporary stories show how history is made every day by ordinary human beings. Students will begin to understand that they also have the power to change the course of history through their own individual actions. They will explore what it means to be a citizen in a democracy, to exercise ones rights and responsibilities in the service of a more humane and compassionate world.

• Students understand the chronological organization of history and know how to organize events and people into major eras to identify and explain historical relationships.

• Students understand how to use the processes and resources of historical inquiry.

• Students understand that societies are diverse and have changed over time.

• Students understand how science, technology and economic activity have developed, changed and affected societies throughout history.

• Students understand political institutions and theories that have developed and changed over time.

• Students understand how economic, political, cultural and social processes interact to shape patterns of human populations, interdependence, cooperation and conflict.

• Students apply knowledge of people, places and environments to understand the past and present and to plan for the future.

• Students understand the importance of primary sources as historical documentation.

• Students understand the process of socialization and how it affects their value system.

• Students understand the factors that shape an individual’s identity.

• Students understand how society uses the power of classification and labels to include and to discriminate.

• Students understand the conditions that brought fascist and totalitarian regimes to power in Europe.

• Students understand the meaning of emigration, immigration, expropriation, and Aryanization.

• Students understand the collapse of democracy, role of censorship and the loss of individual freedom under fascism.

• Students understand the universal lessons of the Holocaust; in terms of prejudice and racism, peer pressure, indifference, personal and institutional greed, obedience, propaganda, use and abuse of power, civil rights and responsibility.

• Students understand that governments and individuals often distort history for their own purposes.

• Students understand the power of the individual and the need for personal ethics.

Sonia Weitz

In the summer of 2008, I took a seminar at the Facing History Institute in Brookline, Massachusetts.  The course ran a full week and each day was crammed with group activities, lectures, documentaries, and hands-on educational activities from 9:00am to 5:00pm.  One of the highlights of the week for me was that I had the pleasure and honor to meet and listen to a lecture by Sonia Weitz, a Holocaust survivor, who spoke about her experiences before and during the War. Sonia was born in Krakow, Poland, and survived the Krakow Ghetto and five camps (Plaszow, Auschwitz, Bergen Belsen, Venusberg, and Matthausen). Only Sonia and her sister survived to tell the story of the horrors they saw and experienced.

When asked if she ever gets angry when thinking about her experiences, she said, "My anger is reserved for the by-standers - the people who let it happen, those in America who did nothing to help us during the War and with people who say the Holocaust did not happen."  I hope you will take a few minutes to read a portion of Sonia Weitz's book below.

As I prepare to teach this course in the fall of 2008, I am mindful of the responsibility to make sure I live up to the expectations of my seminar leaders who did such an amazing job of making Facing History and Ourselves come alive for me every hour of every day during the seminar this summer.

 You can listen to a lecture by Sonia here. http://www.facinghistory.org/video/remembering-past-sonia-weitzs-history

I Promised I Would Tell

by Sonia Weitz

(Save these files to your computer by right-clicking and selecting "Save Target As")

• Chapter 1

• Chapter 2

• Chapter 3

• Chapter 4

• Chapter 5

• Chapter 6

• Chapter 7

• Chapter 8

• Chapter 9

• Chapter 10

RESOURCE BOOK

(Save these files to your computer by right-clicking and selecting "Save Target As")

• Table of Contents

• Preface

• Introduction

• Chapter 1

• Chapter 2

• Chapter 3

• Chapter 4

• Chapter 5

• Chapter 6

• Chapter 7

• Chapter 8

• Chapter 9

• Chapter 10

• Chapter 11

P R O J E C T S and R E A D I N G S

	Making a Difference Project
	Creating a Blog
	Page Organizer for Blog
	The Armenian Genocide Project
	Slide Organizer
	Reading 5: Propaganda Project
	Timeline Project
	Weimar Republic Project
	Weimar Republic Lecture
	Blog Assignment: November 3rd
	Movie Review Form
	Making A Difference Project Rubric

POWERPOINT

	World War I
	8 Stages of Genocide