I have been teaching Social Studies at P.S.1. for close to 8 full years now.  My passion in this area is American history, however, in recent years, I have become very passionate about teaching middle schoolers about the Holocaust.  I'm not sure how this passion came to be.  I think it was a visit to our staff development meeting by representatives from a powerful educational organization called Facing History and Ourselves.  This group supports teachers in helping to create meaningful learning experiences for their students in areas that are sometimes hard to teach-the painful parts of our history that include discrimination or injustice.  Soon after their visit, I completed a summer training that immersed me in their curriculum and next thing you know, I was integrating Holocaust teaching into my 8th grade social studies classes each year. 
 
Each year since, I have tried to find ways to make this curriculum memorable to our students.  Last year we staged a play based on an anthology of diaries written by young people living during the Holocaust called, Salvaged Pages.  I worked collaboratively with the students and we took the diverse entries and wove them together into a chronological story of these young people.  We performed the play in the spring last year and we plan to revive it this year and travel to schools to perform it. 
 
In addition to the play, we are planning to take a trip to Washington DC in April!  Our primary focus will be to visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum where I am fortunate enough to be a teacher fellow and where I spent a week last summer immersed in Holocaust studies.  Of course we will take advantage of all of the amazing things DC has to offer-it is the perfect city for kids this age.  We are fundraising like mad and hope to include as many of our middle schoolers as we possibly can on this journey-many of whom have never left Colorado.  Our trip is scheduled for the 17th to the 24th of April and we are spending time in advisements as well as in social studies class planning for the trip.  There is great excitement in the middle house right now.  Many of P.S.1.'s past trips have catered to the high school students and this is a trip designed especially for our 6th through 8th graders-it's their turn to experience the incredible learning that can come with travel.