- Video shows Green Bay middle school students continue their Holocaust education on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
- Students at John Dewey Academy of Learning, reflecting on their recent trip to the Illinois Holocaust Museum, aim to push for Holocaust education expansion throughout Wisconsin.
(The following is a transcription of the full broadcast story)
Middle school students at John Dewey Academy of Learning continued their education about the Holocaust on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
A class of seventh graders visited the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center on Friday. On Monday they discussed the importance of remembering this historically significant and horrific event.
These students spent Holocaust Remembrance Day reflecting on their recent trip, which included a speech, from a second generation survivor.
"It was very horrifying from what I learned and how bad it really was," said seventh grader Ethan Cotter.
"It's very unfortunate that it came to that in the first place so the most I can do at this point in time is to not let it happen again," said seventh grader Cordelia Saharsky.
Now, their goal: to help make sure students like them learn about the genocide.
The school's Holocaust curriculum is 12 weeks long, but that's well above state requirements.
Wisconsin requires students to be taught about the Holocaust and other genocides at least once between grades 5 through 8 and again in high school.
But that's where the guidelines stop.
"There wasn't any guidelines on it. Nor was there any curriculum that was handed about it," said Middle School Advisor Brianna Nichols.
"You could literally just talk about it today on Remembrance Day and you covered it for four years then."
A pair of students will go back to the museum in February for a leadership day.
After that, they say they'll push to change how the Holocaust is taught in our state.
"We want it to be a longer period of time than like 'Ok this is what happened' and it's just a one class, one day sort of thing," said eighth grader Ayden Schmidt who will be one of the students returning to the museum in February.
"You don't get the full extent, you don't understand all the emotions and you don't feel the same thing you would if you had gone through the entire class."
After they learn how to create an action plan at the conference, the students say their next steps will be to put the plan in action including writing to their congressman and the governor.