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Dear Administrator:
Violent acts in our society and brazenly hateful speech harm our children, often generating indifference and perpetuating more bigotry. Through a partnership of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Bedford and Bristol Community College Holocaust & Genocide Center, we are introducing Trunks of Tolerance for high school students to learn about the Holocaust. By exposing students to nonfiction materials, posters, art and timeline cards, we aim to promote tolerance and respect in our diverse communities.
For the last seven years we have provided trunks with Holocaust materials for middle school students with much success. These new trunks, aimed at high school students, grew out of a request from teachers for materials geared to older students.
We are requesting your permission to offer interested teachers in your district/school the ability to borrow FREE Holocaust materials to supplement their existing curriculum while fulfilling Common Core standards. The scope of this project is limited to stories of survival, rescuers, and resistance. This program models other Holocaust Trunk Projects in Georgia, Texas, Florida, and New Jersey that have been successful for many years, connecting students with real world problems.
Our committee will provide only teachers who volunteer to participate with a variety of nonfiction books, posters, timeline cards, poetry, and pictures of art with links to other materials from a variety of resources, including the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Echoes and Reflections, and IWitness, all packed in an old trunk. A list of all materials can be found on the Federation website by clicking on FAQs.
Each teacher who signs up will get to keep the trunk in his or her classroom for up to one month to incorporate the materials into existing lessons. Students have many opportunities to express their understanding of the universal lessons from the Holocaust through suggestions for student projects found on the Federation website.
Our goal is to have students create a final project that will be shared with other schools at an exhibit in the spring. Examples include students writing letters to a book author; creating videos of a selection from a text; making propaganda posters; creating a podcast to pass on to other students; and using digital picture frames to display projects.
Please go to the Jewish Federation website http://jewishnewbedford.org & select Administrator Permission Form under the Trunk of Tolerance link to grant your permission. Thank you for supporting this worthwhile project.
Jewish Federation of
Greater New Bedfor
Amir Cohen, Director |
Bristol Community College
Holocaust & Genocide Center
Dr. Ron Weisberger, Director |
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