Spurred by Holocaust studies, Kent teacher puts emphasis on social justice in the classroom: Slide show of Holocaust sites

It was the shoes on a riverbank that brought Debbie Carlson close to tears.

The Meridian Middle School teacher was on a trip to Eastern Europe this summer, and her tour group passed by a bronze sculpture of shoes, lined up on a riverbank. There were work shoes, children’s shoes, ladies’ shoes: a mixture of jobs, genders and ages.

The significance of the sculpture wasn’t lost on Carlson, who happened by this spot in the soft light of a summer day in Budapest, along the banks of Danube River with her tour group, while visiting sites of the Holocaust.

The shoes were the wordless reminder of the men, women and children whom the Nazis or their Hungarian counterparts lined up and shot along the riverbank. The bodies fell into the river, to be swept away by the current, their identities lost to their families and the world.

“When they were exterminating the Jews, they would line them up, and shoot them into the river,” Carlson says, of what she learned happened on that riverbank.

For Carlson, the sculpture was a consciousness-raising moment – one of many she experienced on the three-week trip.

Sitting Sept. 3 in her brightly lit classroom, surrounded by cheerful posters and inspirational quotes, Carlson seems worlds away from the darkness the Nazis perpetrated. But the expression on her face – a mixture of bewilderment, sadness and resolve – speaks volumes.

“How could any human being participate in this?” she asks. “I don’t understand it, the kids don’t understand it, and neither does anyone else.”

Longtime interest

Carlson, who got into teaching after years as a mortgage underwriter, says she was always interested in learning about the Holocaust.

“I do not remember a time when I wasn’t reading stories about the people who survived the Holocaust,” she said. “I’m not sure if it was their will to live, or something else.”

When she began teaching English, Carlson started looking into different curriculums and reading materials. She realized that through Holocaust writings, she had a wealth of material from which she could apply reading and thinking skills, as well as exploring the broader issues of social justice and personal courage.

“That’s my theme,” she said. “I never want a kid to be a bystander. The Holocaust is an example of genocide, some of which is going on now as we speak. We can’t just watch wrongs happen.”

Although she’s quick to add the underlying directive in all of this is her main job: teaching literacy.

“I do very much care that they can read and write,” she said.

Her trip was made through the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center, a nonprofit organization based in Seattle devoted to teaching educators about social justice and humanity, through the study of the Holocaust.

Prepped with a reading list and accompanied by friends, Carlson set off on a poignant journey through Hungary and the Czech Republic for three weeks, visiting the places made notorious under the Nazi regime: the death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Czech towns of Terezin and Litromerce, sites of Jewish ghettoes and then concentration camps; the Czech town of Lidice, whose men, women and children were either killed or sent to death camps so that Nazis could make an example of what suspected rebels to the Third Reich would face.

The trip was not what one would call a vacation.

“It was heart-wrenching,” Carlson said. “I stood in the places they stood. I felt like I was standing on hallowed ground.”

Of Lidice, burned and bulldozed by the Nazis, but later rebuilt by the Czech government, “now it looks like a beautiful park,” Carlson said.

And while the history of Lidice is laced with tragedy, it’s the story of how other countries across the globe reacted that inspires Carlson.

“When the world learned about this, other towns renamed themselves ‘Lidice,’” Carlson said.

It’s that spirit of commonality, and pluck, that Carlson said she works to instill in her own students.

“I love to share with my students the many forms of resistance that were shown,” she said.

The travel bug

Used to using her summers as a time to travel, several years ago, Carlson began to wonder if she could combine Holocaust studies and travel for some of her own students.

She’d been through the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. in 2002 – “that was life-changing, it was just so powerful,” she said – and she started thinking how instructive it would be for students to see.

So in 2009, Carlson began scouting around for companies that offered school trips.

“I started getting this idea about taking the kids to Washington, D.C.,” she said.

Someone from a company called World Strides got in touch with her, and outlined what they could do for her.

“I said, ‘we’re gonna take the plunge; we’re gonna do it,’” Carlson said.

She organized an information night at her school and amazed herself to see nearly 200 people show up for it.

And that year, a total of 47 people – just six of them adults – accompanied Carlson for spring break to Washington, D.C., where they toured the museum as well as the country’s capital.

“It was just so great,” Carlson said. “A lot of kids had their eyes opened.”

Ever since then, she has been offering the program to her students and their families, and has been making the annual trek to the nation’s capital.

But the trip is expensive and it’s not covered in any way by the school. Carlson is hoping that perhaps local organizations might be interested in helping fund the trips for individual students, so that more can attend. For many families at the school, a trip like that is simply not within their reach.

“I would really like to see some opportunities for kids who can’t afford to go,” Carlson said.

Teaching tolerance

Meridian Middle School, like a number of schools in the district, has a highly diverse population. A number of the students, from politically unstable regions like Africa’s Sudan, or Somalia, have lived through some of their own nightmares involving genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Those students are mixed with others who have lived, with relative ease, in places with less conflict and more affluence.

For Carlson, the lessons she’s learning from her students, as well as the curriculum she uses called “Teaching Tolerance” from an entity called the Southern Poverty Law Center, hit on similar themes, which also are reflected in Holocaust literature.

“We are learning the difference between being the oppressor, the victim, the bystander,” she said. “That’s my theme: I never want kids to be a bystander.

“I think their eyes are opened by it.”