King’s Fork High School had four teachers participate in the 2018 Belfer National Conference for Educators in Washington, D.C., at the end of July.

The four teachers — Amy Callis, Brittany Collins, Matthew Fike and Sarah Hershey — spent three days participating in workshops and touring the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. During the workshops, they learned new ways to teach the subject and have their students connect with the information.

“Other than genocide, the Holocaust provides an opportunity to connect it with bullying in classrooms,” Callis said.

A survivor Callis met at the conference told her that if they teach anything in their classrooms, they should teach their students to watch what happens in the world and not be a bystander.

“The most important thing they focused on was ways to teach the bystanders and the people who watched and let it happen,” Collins said. “They talked about bystanders and if the European people had done things differently, then the Holocaust could have been prevented.”

Their new knowledge arms them with a different way to teach about the Holocaust. Rather than simply teach statistics, they plan to use real stories from the Holocaust so their students understand the gravity of the history.

“Going to the conference gave me some resources that will help take on the complex, tragic era, and it will help me to teach it more effectively,” Hershey said. “We have to stress respect for the victims and for the families, and these resources will help with the complexity.”

Fike focused on trying to think 30 years down the road.

“Imagine 30 years from now, and all the survivors will be dead. Human behavior, over the course of centuries, shows they want to seize power and try to dominate other groups,” Fike said. “(We have to) make sure our students have a good knowledge and to say it will never happen again.”

No matter what they took away from the conference, all the teachers feel rejuvenated and ready to teach their students about the Holocaust.

Hershey has a plan for the first day of school to integrate what she learned at the conference, and she is excited to get back into the classroom.

“I’m ready,” Hershey said.

While not everyone can go to the conference, all four participants highly recommend applying for a chance to learn.

“They are supportive of teachers, and this is something that other teachers might consider attending,” Callis said.

A total of 220 participants participated in the three-day conference.