This grant paid for a set of curriculum materials and experiences that would help pre-service teachers bring meaningful literacy experiences to their content-area teaching. Participants included 64 education, 4-8, and ESL certification seekers in the education program at the University of North Texas. The work focused primarily on the Holocaust, but participants selected one of the 18 critical issues addressed in the book What Matters: The World’s Preeminent Photojournalists and Thinkers Depict Essential Issues of Our Time (David Elliott Cohen, 2008) for their own units that sought to develop upstanding student citizens. Funds from the Memorial Library purchased books and texts that support Holocaust education, funded a visit from Jack Repp, a Holocaust survivor who spoke with the student and faculty on campus, and supported a trip to the Dallas Holocaust Museum.
In the program’s second semester, participants returned to their classrooms to complete their student teaching. Several chose to teach the lessons they had created, and to make those lesson sequences the basis of an action research project required by the university. Some of these were then presented at the Student Teacher Celebration at end of the school year to an audience of families, school administrators, and university faculty.
Holocaust survivor Jack Repp with students in the education program at the University of North Texas