March 2004
I circled the tables, collecting and sorting leftover handouts from the day’s Holocaust education workshop I had just led, when I heard a woman behind me.
“Excuse me, Aimee?” she said.
The room had cleared except for a few people on the periphery, talking and looking at resources.
“Yes?”
I turned, smiling, still on the post-workshop adrenaline high that accompanied a job well done, and found a middle-aged face, surrounded by loose and frizzy dark curls, pinched in a frown.
“You know, you or the museum should really research the area you’re going into a little more,” she said. “I teach at a Jewish day school here in the Bay Area, and we have no trouble getting Holocaust survivors in the classroom.”
I was in San Francisco, brought there by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a team member for the Northern California Forum on Holocaust Education. We had split into five separate classroom sessions to accommodate more than 200 attendees, including survivors, and this woman had been in mine. We’d just wrapped up a few days of sharing resources and strategies for teaching about the Holocaust, which included finding survivor testimony.
I wondered how I should respond. I didn’t want to speak on behalf of the museum, because it wasn’t my place. And I had been trying to help teachers who might not have access to bringing survivors into their classroom.
“Also—” she continued.
I tensed. Uh oh. The soft fluorescent lights overhead reflected in her wire-framed, circular glasses.
“You made it very clear that you are from a small, rural town and that you are not Jewish.”
“Yes,” I agreed.
“So, what right do you think you have to teach about this?” she accused.
During the course of the workshop, I had shared that I taught high school English at my alma mater and that I lived in the same small town where I grew up—with little to no diversity—and yes, I had also shared I was not Jewish. But why did any of that matter? I was just giving my audience the context necessary to understand my pedagogy.
I felt the heat of blood rush into my cheeks as a tight pain crossed my forehead.
It’s a good thing I hadn’t told them how I’d gotten my start in Holocaust education!
At first, it was about money and convenience. After just two years of teaching, I found out that I needed only a few more semester hours to move up a level on the district’s salary scale. When I saw that a weeklong course on teaching the Holocaust was being offered at a nearby university during my summer vacation, I was intrigued, and I was sure it would be easy to schedule a sitter for my then one- and three-year-old daughters.
It turned out that the course was more than intriguing. It changed me.
For that week, every day and all day long, I was immersed in Holocaust history, documentaries, literature, writing, and speakers. The more I learned, the more horrified I became. How could people treat other human beings like that? And how was it possible that children could be separated from their mothers or fathers or families? As a new and young mother, I was appalled. I knew then that I had to teach about this tragic time period to connect students to the most important lesson that anyone can ultimately learn: We are all human beings sharing the same world, no better than anyone else.
That’s what right I had.
But my brain was too slow catching up to her criticism to respond, and she had made her point. She was gone. Hot tears formed behind my eyes, threatening to spill, but someone was still in the room. I couldn’t cry—not yet.
Pull it together, Aimee, I told myself, continuing to collect the remains of the workshop.
She had no idea what I had done the past nine years, searching out any and all chances to learn about the Holocaust. She didn’t know I’d raised over $2,000 for a study trip to Poland and Israel that kept me away from my two small daughters for almost a month. She didn’t know that I’d developed my own elective course on the Holocaust, or that I had been receiving hate mail from Holocaust deniers for the past seven years. She didn’t know I’d won a contest through the museum for a lesson I’d created to teach about pre-War Jewish life in Europe. She didn’t know that lesson was filmed for an online video and published in a museum teacher resource. She didn’t know that I was preparing to take a second field trip with students to Washington, D.C., that spring, specifically to visit the Holocaust museum and hear a survivor speak. And she didn’t know I’d written and won a grant to bring a Holocaust survivor to Loudonville in the next month.
Man, why hadn’t I thought of all that a few minutes ago?
“Aimee?” a male voice said behind me.
Oh no. More disapproval?
A younger teacher approached, smiling.
“I hope your students realize how lucky they are to have such a creative and passionate teacher as you,” he said, before shaking my hand and leaving the room.
I was incredulous.
Two evaluations, each at different ends of the spectrum, both in the span of less than five minutes. I wondered if he’d heard her and just wanted to make me feel better. I wondered if he meant what he had said. And I knew which of the two should influence me, no matter the motive, but criticism tends to leave more of a mark, doesn’t it?
And that’s why I broke out in tears packing up the rest of my things.
Three days later and back in Ohio, when my phone rang and the caller ID said California, I winced. Maybe I shouldn’t answer, I thought.
“Is this Aimee?” a female voice asked.
Uh oh. Was this call going to echo the biting words from just days before, or was I just paranoid?
“Yes?”
“I’m calling to let you know that you have been chosen as one of thirty-nine teacher-winners from across the country to receive the Disney National Teaching Award this year. Congratulations!”
Oh. My. God. OhmyGod. OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod.
Me! An award-winning teacher after only twelve years! Me! Out of more than 10,000 applications!
Something I’d dreamed of since college had come true!
But here’s the best part:
The person who had nominated me for the Disney Award was a former high school history teacher who had not only won the award twelve years before but was also Jewish and currently making his career in Holocaust education at the national level. He had observed me teaching—both students and other educators—on several occasions. If he thought enough of my abilities for this recognition, and my application had actually won, then maybe I did have a right to teach about the Holocaust.
This atrocity had left its mark on me, a permanent one, and I had to teach about it. Even if I were from a small, rural town in Ohio. And even if I weren’t Jewish.
Frizzy-haired, frown lady unfortunately had left a mark on me, too.
But I would rebound.
With a vengeance.