An evening with Sondra Perl
What does it mean to teach in 2023?
On Tuesday (18/4) a group of teachers gathered around the table at our school to reflect on the challenges of twenty-first-century education. Sondra Perl, senior director of the US programs at the Olga Lengyel Institute for Holocaust Education and Human Rights 
, led us through the evening.
This quote in particular from Richard Koch challenged us to think about what we do when we enter the classroom each day, when we talk with our students and colleagues and what we want to create as teachers for our students.
“The story of twenty-first-century education is surely still to be written. It could be a story of struggle between what we say we want and what we as a nation are willing to provide. It could be a tale of horror revealing the harm we do by being harsh instead of helping students in need. It could be a dystopian narrative contrasting opportunities dreamt of under the umbrella of John Dewey with ravages brought by the storms of testing and inequity. Or it could be a mystery about whether, in our busy, preoccupied lives, we will honor the sacredness of our own children.
Let’s write the next part of this story together. Let’s blink back our hurt, wherever it comes from, and bring our deepest impulse of kindness to the table. Let’s offer students scaffolding instead of judgment. Let’s look at the world’s past intolerance of difference and respond with nurturing for all learners, who may grow mercy for others in our future. Let’s write this story of twenty-first- century [Holocaust] education together, and let’s make it the story of our perseverance and love.”
Richard Koch, The Mindful Writing Workshop: Teaching in the Age of Stress and Trauma, Dog Ear Publishing, 2019, p. 2. (Nadine Ulseß-Schurda, 1. Mai 2023)
Bild: Nadine Ulseß-Schurda
