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Can education insure a safer and more humane world?  Is it possible for educators to arouse conscience and compassion in their students?  These questions invariably present themselves to Holocaust educators at some point in their teaching, and there are probably as many answers to the questions as there are educators. These are certainly questions with which I have struggled, sharing  that deep longing of which Stephen Haynes speaks, but also fearing decisions that might be inappropriate for this difficult and sensitive subject. While attending the Transformative Learning through Holocaust Education program sponsored by Seton Hill University and Sisters of Our Lady of Sion, I found that these questions deeply connected to the reflections that we experienced in both the preparation for and attendance in the  Transformative Learning sessions led by Sr. Audrey Doetzel, NDS.  

As the participants in the Transformative Learning sessions began to share the results of their year-long guided reflections, commonalities among them quickly emerged.  One of the strongest commonalities, expressed in some way by all of the participants, was the moment of recognition at some point in their teaching, that the subject of the Holocaust  required more than just knowledge–that there was a connection between that knowledge and the deep expressions of our shared humanity-or as some might say between the head and the heart– that began to occur.  This connection, we believed, was the beginning of transformative learning. Although one might expect this connection in a group of educators who were all practicing Catholics with a deep sense of spirituality,  I have found this same recognition among most serious Holocaust educators regardless of their backgrounds.

The value of the Transformative Learning through Holocaust Education program for me was the affirmation that what I had already experienced was valid.  My moment of recognition that there was an imbalance in my teaching had come several years earlier, and that recognition and the resulting changes in the focus of my teaching about the Holocaust, was transformative for me and my students. I was not fully aware that what we were experiencing was transformation, but I knew that something had changed dramatically, both in the work the students were producing and the relationship among the students as well as their relationship with me.  We were bonded in a way that I had never experienced before with students and this continued for the remaining years that I taught a unit on the Holocaust.

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