Photo by Erin Nelson.
Charlsie Wigley speaks with seventh-grade students about what they know about the Holocaust during a class at Chelsea Middle School and shares her experience from a Holocaust educational trip she took over the summer.
Chelsea Middle School teacher Charlsie Wigley spent the last week of her summer break in Poland furthering her education about the Holocaust.
The seventh-grade literature teacher was one of 25 educators from across the country chosen to take part in this trip sponsored by the Echoes & Reflections organization, which provides educational resources and professional development about the Holocaust for middle and high school educators.
Since 2005, Echoes & Reflections has impacted more than 60,000 educators, reaching an estimated 6 million students across the United States through Holocaust programs to help educators gain the skills and confidence to teach the topic effectively.
“Every year, I teach a Holocaust unit in Literature that focuses on the origins of the Holocaust and steps the students can take today to ensure that ‘never again’ is realized,” Wigley said. “This learning opportunity was a chance for me to gain knowledge of what took place in these spaces and better commemorate the memory of all that was lost during the horrific shoah.”
This was Wigley’s second trip to expand her knowledge of the Holocaust. In 2015, she attended a two-week Holocaust studies seminar in New York through The Olga Lengyel Institute for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights (TOLI), where she got to meet with survivors.
“I still use lessons from that seminar in my classroom and am glad I could continue my learning alongside inspirational educators from around the United States,” Wigley said.
After finding out she had been chosen for the program in February, she knew it would be an emotional, yet necessary, journey to see these sites first-hand. During her five-day visit to Poland, Wigley toured concentration camps, cemeteries and museums and engaged in critical discussions with educators about how to best communicate the content to students.
“I think someone can never be prepared,” she said. “I was emotional every single day, and the other teachers were as well. The times I was most disturbed was when they were talking about the children. I’m not a parent, but seeing others’ reactions who were, made me more emotional.”
The journey started in the ghettos of Warsaw, then went to a forest where many Jews were executed. She also toured the ghetto at Lodz and a concentration camp outside Treblinka. Three death camps were also on her itinerary at Auschwitz-Birkenau (where she saw a photo of a survivor she had met in 2015), Treblinka and Chelmno.
“Chelmno was the saddest of all,” she said. “People were bussed there in vans, and then the buses were gassed, after which the bodies were transported to pits and burned. We visited three Jewish cemeteries, one which just had a mass grave/pit area, and that was troubling.”
Photo courtesy of Charlsie Wigley.
Chelsea Middle School teacher Charlsie Wigley reads an original poem dedicated to Judikje Themans, a victim of the Holocaust, during a memorial at Treblinka Extermination Camp in Poland.
In teaching literature to middle schoolers, Wigley said the lessons of what happened during the Holocaust are important for her students to hear. She said in middle school, students are dealing with a lot of hormones, behaviors and bullying, and she can draw parallels with the discrimination and hate that built up to the Holocaust.
“The Holocaust didn’t happen because some crazy person woke up and decided to hate,” she said. “Hate and discrimination are part of our world. I teach my students how they can avoid showing hate toward others, but also avoid being a bystander, and when they are put in a position of power or building relationships with people, they don’t continue the cycle of hate.”
During the school year, Wigley will have her students research an individual person from the Holocaust and present it in some way in the classroom.
“My hope in going on this learning experience is to become a more informed educator for my students,” she said. “It is my wish to do justice to victims and survivors’ stories and commemorate them so that their memory lives on in ensuring that genocide stops around the world. I anticipate that this learning expedition will help my students better understand this world’s past so they can work to shape a better future.”
Wigley also wants to spread the word about Echoes & Reflections to more educators in the area. She brought back resources so others can bring the stories of resilience and resistance to their classrooms. Wigley hopes to provide local teachers in the area with training this fall.
After returning home, Wigley said she feels re-energized to make sure these lessons are never forgotten in lives of her students, but to also make them feel loved and accepted.
“I want my students to live a life of principle and recognize the value of everyone around them and understand that even if they don’t agree with someone else’s values or religion, to still have respect for life. It’s really going back to the golden rule and treating others how you want to be treated.”
