Three teachers receive grants from center

[MosJan]

Three teachers receive grants from center

The money will help develop programs on social injustice and human rights.

Thursday, June 14, 2001

 

By Cammi Clark

 

 

Three Onondaga Central high school teachers received grants from the Central New York Teaching Center.

 

The grants will be used todevelop programs around the theme of social injustice and human rights.

 

Rebecca Nicandri, a business teacher, was awarded a $500 grant that is seed money to start an innovative idea, according to the center.

 

Her program will be used to develop a "Human Rights Web Quest."

 

The program is designed to foster collaboration between the business, social studies and English departments. The Web Quest site would provide information on human rights that can be explored and integrated into a joint social studies/English human rights project.

 

Donna Merlau, a social studies teacher and department head, and Laura Visconti, a first-year English teacher, received a $750 grant. The money will be used to collaborate in English and 10th-grade social studies. Students will be required to explore social injustice and human rights in the context of South Africa and apartheid, Cambodia and the killing fields, China and the Tiananmen Square massacre, and Armenia and genocide.

 

Students will read and summarize from a pre-selected list of fiction or nonfiction books, view a movie, review Web sites and conduct library research on the chosen culture and injustice/human rights violation.

 

Visconti also was chosen to attend the Arthur and Rochelle Belfer National Conference for Educators July 8 to 10.

 

The Washington, D.C., conference is competitive and open to middle and high school educators from across the nation with five or fewer years teaching about the Holocaust.

 

Educators who complete the program receive a collection of educational resources and a voucher to purchase Holocaust-related resources.

 

Museum educators and scholars will share rationales, strategies and approaches for presenting this complex topic to students in sessions designed specifically for teachers.

 

Participants will have extensive time to view the Holocaust museum's permanent exhibition, "Remember the Children: Daniel's Story" and other special exhibitions and visit the interactive computers in the Wexner Learning Center and the Education Resource Center. Seminars will emphasize planning and implementing units of study for teaching about the Holocaust in middle and high schools.

 

Visconti teaches a unit with a social injustice/human rights theme.

 

© 2001 The Syracuse Newspapers. Used with permission.