Kim Klett has taught about the Holocaust for 20 years. When her Holocaust Literature class debuted at Dobson High school in 2001, it was only the second of its kind offered in a public Arizona high school.
Having a whole class dedicated to Holocaust education has been “a real luxury,” she said. And for the last three years, it’s been a year-long class rather than the original semester course.
“It sounds crazy because I have a year, but the hardest part is I still have to limit myself in what I can do,” she said. “Trying to choose the best of what I think is out there — that’s been the most difficult for me.”
With Arizona recently mandating Holocaust education, many teachers around the state are now making some of those same tough decisions: How much time should be spent on the subject? What material should be featured? How does the subject get the attention it deserves with limited time and resources?
In October 2020, the Arizona Board of Education (ADE) made a rule change requiring students to receive instruction on the Holocaust at least twice during their secondary schooling. Then in July, Gov. Doug Ducey signed legislation mandating that Arizona’s public schools teach about the Holocaust and other genocides at least twice between seventh and twelfth grades. The law went into effect Sept. 30.
Arizona is a local control state, meaning it is up to each school district, and in many cases, each teacher, to decide how to meet the requirements of the mandate and legislation, which also do not provide any guidance. There is no statewide requirement for how much instructional time must be spent on Holocaust education.
Klett said it would be helpful if the mandate or legislation were “more defined,” particularly with what aspects should be covered in junior high and what aspects should be covered in high school, so there could be a “clear progression.”
The ADE, working with the The Taskforce For Holocaust Education and Other Genocides — led by the Phoenix Holocaust Association — is doing its best to fill in any gaps by providing resources and professional development for teachers. Klett is also a PHA board member.
“We’re trying to help make things as easy for teachers as possible,” said PHA President Sheryl Bronkesh.
Bronkesh and Klett, who is also a senior facilitator with Echoes & Reflections — a nonprofit that provides professional development to educators to teach about the Holocaust — are both providing seminars, presentations and trainings to teachers on Holocaust education.
“What I’m hearing from a lot of teachers is that they feel very daunted,” Klett said. “They think that it’s a serious topic — and it is — and they want to give it the reverence and attention, and they want to make sure they do it well.”
The task force developed a toolkit for teachers looking for training on the subject matter and teaching it, which ADE features on its website.
“That’s huge,” Bronkesh said. “I am so proud that we were able to involve professors from all three state universities, and from different community colleges, to survivors and other educators who worked together quickly to develop that resource. To me, that’s a major achievement.”
The toolkit presents as a web page with a short introduction and a menu of options that include a “Getting Started Guide from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum,” which includes lesson plans and other resources; classroom lessons and videos; tips, resources and training materials for teachers on the Holocaust and other genocides; and recorded webinars and presentations.
Terri Welsh, secondary social studies specialist with the Mesa Public School District, said she gets regular notifications from the PHA about new educational tools and materials that are available. “I do send those out to teachers, and let them know, say, in department chair meetings,” she said. But, she said, it can be overwhelming to sort through all that is available, especially for teachers. “We try to pick out the best. Since this legislation is pretty new, teachers are grappling with what is the best stuff to bring into the classroom, and it’s going to be a process.”
Teachers across the district have long been teaching about the Holocaust and other genocides, she said. However, the recent rule changes and legislation have made the district and teachers even more conscious of Holocaust education, she said.
The district recently began offering teachers a monthly series of 90-minute workshops with Echoes & Reflections and the Anti-Defamation League.
“At the district level, we’re just making sure that teachers are aware of the legislation and are making sure that they are taking time and space to teach about it and to teach it well,” Welsh said.
A spokeswoman for the Peoria School Unified School District said it has greatly expanded its Holocaust instruction since last October, to include exploration of pre-war Jewish life, connections between the Holocaust and contemporary antisemitism, Jewish resistance during the Holocaust, exploring the inactions of individuals and groups as it relates to bystanders, collaborators and perpetrators and more.
Erin Dunsey, communications manager for the Peoria Unified School District, said as teachers become more confident in teaching the Holocaust and other genocides, “we hope to see some great things happening in classrooms as students explore this difficult time in history.”
She noted the district is using the resources provided on the ADE website.
Nancy Norman, a spokeswoman for the Scottsdale Unified School District, said the 2020 rule change and following legislation has had little impact on the district. Following the 2018 revision to Arizona Social Science standards, which addressed Holocaust education at the middle and high school level, teachers throughout the district worked together in the fall of 2019 to develop a curriculum that addressed Holocaust education.
“This important education was first taught to SUSD students last year, in the 2020-2021 school year,” she said.
The 2018 History and Social Science Standards required coverage of the Holocaust and other genocides in eighth grade and again in high school, but Morgan Dick, a spokeswoman for ADE, said the recent legislation “put a spotlight on how critical it is to teach this content to students and also emphasized this to administrators, teachers and parents.”
Margaret Fountain, social studies content specialist with the Tempe Union High School District, said the district also was minimally impacted because of its work following the 2018 social studies standards revision. “We found that we had included a comprehensive study of the Holocaust,” she said. But she has curated more materials for teachers on the topic, including from the toolkit featured on the ADE website, and shared them with teachers.
She has also attended training with the ADE on Holocaust instruction and has shared that as well as other professional development opportunities. “For example, this week I received information that the East Valley Jewish Community Center has offered us the opportunity to do a virtual tour with our students of Auschwitz Concentration Camp and I sent this out to my teachers,” she said.
Becky Kelbaugh, a spokeswoman with the Paradise Valley Unified School District, said it is also using the resources available on the ADE site, and said the mandate and legislation has also minimally impacted the district. “Holocaust education has been part of K-12 education for several years and is embedded within the district’s curriculum,” she said. “Since the legislation, more resources regarding the Holocaust have been provided to teachers to supplement what they had already been teaching.”
A spokesman for the Chandler Unified School District said staff is in the process of reviewing their plan and was not able to provide further details.
Spokespeople for the Phoenix Union High School, Glendale Union High School, Cave Creek Unified School and Flagstaff Unified districts did not return a request for comment.
A national survey found last September that “when asked how many Jews were killed during the Holocaust, 63% of millennials (those aged 25-40) and Gen Z (those aged 18-24) did not know 6 million Jews were murdered.” That figure climbed to 67% in Arizona. The survey, commissioned by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, also found 11% of national respondents — 15% in Arizona — believe Jews caused the Holocaust.
Klett, who graduated from an Iowa high school in 1985, said she never learned about the Holocaust until she took a Holocaust Literature class at Arizona State University.
She began teaching at Dobson High School in 1991, and in the late ‘90s she explored the idea of getting a doctoral degree in English. She took a variety of classes to see what she wanted to do.
The Holocaust literature class “was just such an eye opener,” she said. She was always interested in social issues and injustice, and once she learned about the Holocaust she couldn’t stop reading about it. “I was really just intrigued by the topic,” and she knew her high school students would connect with the topic and its messages.
When students learn about the Holocaust, they tend to think, “Oh, that’s so sad,” and “Good thing that’s over,” Klett said. But, of course, that is not the case as genocides are still happening. “I think it is super important to empower our students to become activists against genocide, and against hatred and bigotry and antisemitism and all those other ‘isms,’ and just making them aware of that and the power that they do have moving forward.”
In addition to teaching and being a senior facilitator with Echoes & Reflections, Klett is also a museum teacher fellow with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the deputy executive director of the Educator’s Institute for Human Rights. JN
