• Invigorate your classroom
• Learn new, practical teaching strategies
• Gain access to our free lending library of videos and other engaging materials
• Engage with a network of colleagues online and via conference calls, including a call with a Holocaust survivor




*Our spring courses are now all full. We will be offering our online course again in fall, 2006. And we may offer a summer course if there is enough interest. If you are interested, please contact Jenny Bruell.

The opening sessions consider individual and group behavior. How is our identity formed? How do we acquire membership in a group? Participants also consider the relationships among perpetrators, their victims, and bystanders. In the sessions that follow, participants examine the choices Germans and others made in the 1920s and 1930s. As we come to understand the way many of those choices undermined democracy, we begin to realize how hatred, indifference, denial, and opportunism, little by little, can shape a period in history. As we learn how the Jews, "Gypsies," and others were humiliated, isolated, and ultimately murdered during the Holocaust, we discover that history is not inevitable.

The closing sessions consider questions of right and wrong, of guilt and responsibility. In these sessions, participants contemplate issues related to prevention, ethical decision making, and choosing to participate in a democracy, by returning to themes developed in the opening sessions.

Throughout the course, connections are made to other histories, such as those of Rwanda and South Africa. Participants relate the choices people made at other times with those faced in the world today.

The course presents an array of teaching strategies that help develop the skills, values, and beliefs needed to build and sustain a democratic society. These strategies foster in adolescents:

• growth in cognitive and moral reasoning
• empathy for and an understanding of differences

The online courses will take place over 8 weeks. Each week, participants will engage in a variety of activities that will include reading materials, viewing video clips, creating journal entries, and participating in online facilitated discussion forums. Participants are expected to complete approximately four hours of work each week at their own pace.

Our course offers the unique opportunity to connect to other colleagues through three conference calls. One of these calls will be with a survivor of the Holocaust, adding an unmatched level of depth and perspective to the course.

Sample assignments:


Sample course discussion:

Each participant will receive a copy of our resource book, Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior, as well as some additional resources, prior to the start of the course.

And after participating in our online course, educators will have access to:

• a free lending library of videos and other materials.
• personalized support in implementing the program in their middle or high school classroom.
• over 20 resource books and study guides that relate the program to issues in the world today.
• Facing History's online campus with lesson plans, curriculum modules, and other resources.
• online and face-to-face workshops, forums, seminars, and conferences.
• classroom speakers who inspire students.

If you need more information, please contact Jenny Bruell.

Dates and Fees     top

The next online course will be held in early Fall, 2006. Please check back for specific course dates.

Fee: $300 per person fee includes all materials. Please note that the fee does not cover the full cost of the course and follow up. The additional costs for providing these services are underwritten by individual, foundation, and corporate donors.

Graduate Credit: In partnership with Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, participants are eligible for three graduate credits at an additional cost of $480 ($150/credit + $30 registration fee). If you are interested, please indicate so in your application.

Please note that participants taking the course for graduate credits will have additional requirements, including a final project.