Pittsburgh-area teachers inspired by national Holocaust education seminar

Two western Pennsylvania teachers spent part of their summer in an intensive academic program aimed at enhancing Holocaust education in classrooms.

Hallie Leach of St. Therese School in Munhall, and Meg Frank of Riverside High School in North Sewickley Township are among 25 middle and high school teachers chosen from 10 states and Poland as 2025 Alfred Lerner Fellows by the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous.

As such, they participated in the Foundation’s recent Summer Institute for Teachers, a high-level five-day course that covers new techniques for exploring the Holocaust with students.

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Both women were nominated by the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh and have spent more than a decade engaged in professional development around Holocaust learning through a variety of venues, including Classrooms Without Borders, which has taken them to Eastern Europe.

The Foundation seminar, in Newark, featured more than a dozen renowned Holocaust scholars and included lectures on antisemitism and anti-Judaism past and present.

“It was a very deep dive into a complex subject that is going to shape my teaching this fall,” said Frank, who teaches 11th and 12th graders. “I’ve studied the Holocaust for 10 years, and thought I knew it all, as teachers do. But I learned a lot more.”

Leach, a seventh and eighth grade teacher, came away from the seminar with 81 pages of notes and a new network of fellow educators committed to furthering Holocaust education even if it is not mandated by law in their states.

“A good teacher shares,” Leach said. “We’ve created an email chain and will continue sharing.”

Pennsylvania is among states that recommend, but do not require, Holocaust education in schools.

With approval from their schools’ administrators, Leach and Frank, who teach literature and English, developed Holocaust curricula, taking into account that most of their students start with little to no awareness of the genocide of Jews in World War II.

Both teachers use protocols developed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, and work with the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh to access speakers and other resources. They have taken their students on field trips, including to Violins of Hope, a traveling exhibition of instruments owned by Jews during the Holocaust, and the Keeping Tabs memorial at Community Day School in Squirrel Hill.

Frank’s students have visited the US Holocaust museum.

Required reading at both schools is extensive, and includes “Salvaged Pages,” a compilation of diaries of child and adolescent Holocaust victims by Alexandra Zapruder, one of the seminar lecturers.

“It’s hard to reach kids about an event that happened a long time ago, but when they read the words of kids the same age, it creates a connection,” Leach said.

She uses age-appropriate materials, and her syllabus at the start of the school year informs students that they are going to watch films like “I’m Still Here” and parts of “The Path to Nazi Genocide.”

While students are permitted to put their heads on their desks or to take a walk if they find some images too disturbing, Leach said, “I have not yet had anyone leave the room.”

She asks parents to tell her if their children express discomfort with course material, but feedback has been positive, she said. “The responses we get back are ‘Thank you for teaching this.’”

Because her students are Catholic, Leach makes a point of emphasizing their shared heritage with Jews, which makes the subject matter more relatable, she said.

“I talk about how our religion comes from the Jewish faith so we are not as different as students may think. My goal in teaching about the Holocaust is to make a better world where can all live together and not see each other as strangers.”

Frank’s objective in Holocaust education is similar in encouraging a broad humanitarian perspective toward all minorities.

“We need to keep our eyes open to what is going on in the world, and call out oppression and persecution,” said Frank, who also teaches English as a second language. “We have immigrants in our school. My hope is that there’s a transference of what students learn about the Holocaust to anyone they encounter.”

Frank is the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh’s 2025 Teacher of the Year, and is a 2023 recipient of a Righteous Among the Neighbors Award, which recognizes gentiles for their support of the Jewish community.

She is a coordinator for the LIGHT (Leadership through Innovation in Genocide and Human Rights Teaching) Education Initiative.

She lives in Pittsburgh but teaches in a rural part of Beaver County where exposure to Jews and antisemitism is limited, she said, noting that she has had one, non-practicing Jewish student in all the years she has been teaching.

Like Leach, she uses an immersive teaching approach, with books such as “Number the Stars,” Anne Frank’s “The Diary of a Young Girl,” and “Maus”; podcasts; and the documentary “A Tree of Life: The Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting.” Survivors of the shooting have visited her classroom and painted butterflies with the students, Frank said. “That was very impactful, I think in part because some of the older speakers remind them of their grandparents.”

Students are assigned research papers and allowed to choose an aspect of the Holocaust that interests them, Frank said. “Some have chosen the workings of the camps, or Hitler youth, or Joseph Mengele.”

While she is cognizant of the graphic nature of some materials, Frank does not limit the books her students use, choosing class readings based on relevancy and reading level. “The violence isn’t too graphic considering the violence in the Holocaust,” she said.

Both teachers indicated their courses are especially important given the influence of social media.

“I feel that as a teacher I have a responsibility to share the truth of the Holocaust to counter misinformation my students could encounter on social media,” Frank said. “Hopefully they will learn to question what they see and to seek out more information.”

Leach works on helping her students develop the ability to determine trustworthy information sources.
My goal is to teach them how to think,” she said, “not what to think.” PJC

Deborah Weisberg is a freelance writer living in Pittsburgh.