Five educators from our network presented at the National Writing Project (NWP) Annual Meeting in Boston in November of 2013 as part of a panel entitled “Teaching about the Holocaust and Genocide: 21st Century Perspectives.” Cara Crandall, Robert Hadley, Corey Harbaugh, Norma Mota-Altman, and Tosha Tillotson offered best practices for teaching about the Holocaust and other genocides in diverse classrooms across the United States. Their presentations considered how we teach about these difficult subjects as we move further away from the Holocaust in time, and simultaneously face the hard reality of contemporary genocide. Each speaker addressed how classroom inquiry can use innovative technologies and texts to help students learn about the past and take action in the present.

In addition to the panel at the convention, the Memorial Library hosted a reunion dinner for more than 25 past participants from the summer seminar, a group that represented every class year since the first seminar in 2006. Many teachers from our program also went on to present at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) convention which followed NWP’s annual meeting.