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Youngstown, Israeli students learn about Holocaust through Shared Reading Project
CANFIELD
A guest speaker inspired students to enrich their lives by using history and culture as a springboard.
Meghan Shively, freshman honors English teacher, partners her class with a 10th-grade class at Ort Gutman Comprehensive High School in Netanya, Israel, as part of the International Shared Reading Project.
ISRP is a program dedicated to breaking down cultural barriers by bringing classes from America and Israel together by reading and discussing Holocaust literature through various cyber platforms.
Together, students will read “Night,” a memoir about Elie Wiesel’s personal Holocaust experience, and discuss the literature and culture in a pen pal-like fashion via a discussion board.
Wiesel, 87, is a Romanian-born Jewish writer, professor, political activist, Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate.
Jesse McClain – guest speaker from the Youngstown Jewish Community Center, and professor at Kent State University and Youngstown State University – asked Shively to participate in ISRP because of a trip she took.
“Over the summer, I was going to Germany and the Czech Republic, and I was trying to learn everything about the Holocaust. It was my favorite thing to learn about in high school,” Shively said.
“What I always found most interesting was that all my students always go back to the Holocaust. It’s such a dynamic topic,” McClain said.
McClain provided students with background information and answered questions about Adolph Hitler’s Nazi regime and its collaborators killing 6 million Jews to preface the class reading of “Night.”
Joey Marzano, ninth-grade student, said he found the entire subject really interesting, especially coming from another person, rather than a book.
“It’s a lot different when it’s coming from someone who was or knew someone who was actually there,” Marzano said.
McClain said keeping the Holocaust stories alive is important, especially since most of the people who experienced it aren’t around anymore.
“These are true, personal stories. Everyone from then is now all in their 80s and 90s,” McClain said.
Joey said he enjoys having speakers and similar activities to complement the book work in class.
“I think every story has a deeper meaning to it, so stories about the Holocaust you could dissect it more, and find what the person was actually thinking – what Hitler was thinking and what the prisoners were thinking,” Joey said.
Both Shively’s class and the 10th-grade class from Israel will be reading “Night” and having discussions on discussion boards online for this project.