University News Last updated 16 March 2015
Students on the BA (Hons) Primary Education with QTS course have been expanding their own knowledge, as well as learning new ways to teach primary school children about controversial events in history.
Although teaching can be a fun and exciting career, there are times when the topics you need to teach are not easy to tackle, and different approaches are needed to help school pupils understand times gone by. With this in mind, students were set the challenge of learning more about the Holocaust, and find an appropriate way to share their knowledge with primary school children, in terms of content and pedagogy.
Through lectures at the University, a workshop with Karen Van Coevorden, an education officer from The Holocaust Educational Trust, a visit to The National Holocaust Centre and Museum in Nottinghamshire (where a specific exhibition has been created on teaching young children about the Holocaust), to a meeting with Harry Bibring, a Holocaust survivor from Austria, our students learnt a lot!
They realised that looking at different perspectives, and bringing out the more positive elements of an individual’s story could bring a powerful but less frightening aspect to a topic for young children. They discovered that if they were required to teach this in their future careers they could look at the typical life of a mainly (but not exclusively) Jewish community before the Holocaust, events leading up to the Holocaust and the people that helped rescue and support those that were affected.
Although this is a challenging and potentially upsetting topic to look at, students were hugely positive about the experiences they gained, and really valued the opportunity to hear survivor testimonies and recognised how privileged they were to be able to do so. As well as developing their skills in teaching primary history, students developed their understanding of a particular topic, and the importance of mixing classroom learning with practical learning experiences and ‘out of the classroom’ field trips to enrich the learning process.