California's Holocaust Genocide Summer Institute trains 110 teachers
California’s annual Holocaust and genocide education program drew 110 K-12 educators from over 75 schools, offering survivor testimony, curriculum resources and confidence-building workshops. Survey data shows 98% found the materials relevant and 87% felt more prepared to teach the subject.
Program Overview
California remains the first state to mandate Holocaust and genocide instruction, a policy instituted 41 years ago. The California Teachers Collaborative for Holocaust and Genocide Education sponsors a Summer Institute that provides educators with the knowledge and tools needed to discuss these atrocities with students. In June, the fourth annual event assembled 110 K-12 teachers from more than 75 schools and educational organizations across the state.
Survey Results
The Institute’s co-host, the Jewish Family and Children’s Services San Francisco Holocaust Center, collected data from attendees. Key findings:
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Educators attending | 110 |
| Schools represented | 75+ |
| % taught Holocaust or genocides ≤1 year | 30% |
| % found curriculum relevant | 98% |
| % felt more confident teaching | 87% |
These figures suggest that the program reaches a broad audience and that the majority of participants view the resources as useful and feel better equipped to address the topic.
Impact on Teaching
Participants reported that the Institute helped them integrate survivor narratives and historical context into their classrooms. Morgan Blum Schneider, director of JFCS, emphasized the importance of moving beyond dates to explore the lived experiences of those who endured Nazi occupation. “If a student remembers that Poland was invaded on Sept. 1, 1939, that’s great. But more importantly, what was the experience of the people when Poland was invaded by the Nazis?” she said.
Haydee Rodriguez, a history and journalism teacher at Central Union High School in El Centro, shared how the training influenced her lesson plans. She now uses “The Book Thief” as a pre-Holocaust text to highlight authoritarian patterns such as book bans and propaganda. “I plant the seeds so that when the students get to the Holocaust, they’re able to identify those patterns,” Rodriguez explained. She also noted that the Institute’s sessions on resistance stories give her concrete examples to counter misinformation, especially when students encounter Holocaust denial on social media.
Survivor Sessions and Cultural Focus
The Institute featured firsthand accounts from survivors of the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, the Muslim ethnic cleansing in China, and the Holocaust itself. Blum Schneider highlighted the program’s emphasis on celebrating humanity and “peoplehood” across cultures, citing lessons on Armenian Bird Letters that illustrate how Armenians preserved their heritage before and after the 1915-16 genocide. These cultural modules aim to deepen students’ understanding of the diverse impacts of genocide.
For the upcoming school year, Rodriguez has invited the Los Angeles-based Museum of Tolerance to bring its mobile exhibit to her campus. She also plans to maintain connections with her cohort from the Summer Institute through group texts and get-togethers, a strategy she says helps counter the isolation teachers sometimes feel in their classrooms.
