Meaningful Encounters: Preparing Educators to Teach Holocaust Literature

(Paperback)

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Teaching about the Holocaust presents one of the most formidable challenges teachers face. Meaningful Encounters is Paula Ressler and Becca Chases contribution to the efforts of those educators who wish to meet this challenge more knowledgeably and effectively. It tells the story of a unique, inquiry-based English teacher education course focused on Holocaust literature from several genres that integrated literacy pedagogies and literary criticism with historical, philosophical, psychological, and political theories and contexts.



The book involves the reader in the complicated tangle of Holocaust education, critically illuminating how difficult this work is, but also demonstrating how teachers can introduce their students responsibly and ethically to this perennially relevant body of literature. The authors offer no facile solutions to the obstacles and pitfalls inherent in teaching this literature. They raise questions, pose problems, consider and analyze how participants responded to issues that emerged, and suggest alternative approaches.



The authors recount the students and teachers unsettling and enlightening experiences, failures, and successes. By following along, preservice educators will be able to conceptualize, discuss, and practice, and inservice teachers and teacher educators rethink, how to teach Holocaust and other literatures about genocide and mass atrocities in culturally relevant and meaningful ways today.

Reviews

Teachers are asked to perform many wondrous feats and one of them is providing age-appropriate Holocaust education. Meaningful Encounters helps educators to grapple with the ethics, history, and pedagogy of Holocaust education. Drawing on their own experience as educators and learners, Paula Ressler and Becca Chase contextualize the literature historically, address important gender and other issues, and demonstrate effective classroom strategies. Educators working in a wide range of contexts will find inspiration and guidance in this highly readable book. -- Elizabeth D. Heineman, professor, History and Gender, Womens, and Sexuality Studies, University of Iowa
As more states mandate the teaching of the Holocaust, it is imperative that teachers are prepared to correctly teach such lessons. Ressler and Chase thoughtfully present strong rationale and methodology for using Holocaust literature in the classroom. This book is essential for preservice and inservice teachers and teacher educators, especially those in English Language Arts. I wish this book had been available when I started teaching a Holocaust literature course! -- Kimberly Klett, MA, English teacher, Dobson High School, Mesa, Arizona; Museum Teacher Fellow, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; teacher trainer, Echoes and Reflections

Author Bio

Paula Ressler is associate professor emerita at Illinois State University. She is a former director of the English Education Program and faculty member in English and Womens & Gender Studies.



Rebecca Chase is a former assistant director of the Womens & Gender Studies Program and former faculty member in Womens & Gender Studies, English, and English Education at Illinois State University.