According to Maya Angelou, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you.” My dad would agree. His best advice, said in his best dad voice: “Be quiet and listen.” If you think about it, these words are two sides of the same coin: stories need to be told, and that necessitates a listener.
I’ve always loved stories – whether reading them, watching them, or listening to them, it doesn’t really matter, because I’m a collector of words. Shenanigans, bamboozle, brouhaha, and davenport were some words I learned from my grandmother. Those are fun words, and they make me smile when I think of her.
When I started teaching English and reading about 15 years ago, I was so excited to be able to share my love of language with my students. And then came words like Holocaust. Genocide. Atrocity. Shoah. I didn’t remember learning about those words and had only a vague sense of their meaning. I know I wasn’t absent that day, and since I’m quiet, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t talking to a friend. So, I checked with my high school friends (Social media is a wonderful thing!). They didn’t remember learning about those words either. How could this be?
Being woefully unprepared to teach such an overwhelming subject, I wasn’t sure where or how to begin. In my inexperience, I thought I would hammer my students with Holocaust facts. I never felt comfortable with how I was teaching about this subject – I felt I was disrespecting what I was teaching.
In the midst of my discomfort, I had the good fortune to meet Abe Foxman, former national director of the ADL. He shared his Holocaust story with a group of educators, and that experience somehow was empowering for me. I now had permission to worry a little less about the facts and to focus a lot more on the story. He assured me the facts would follow. He was right.
I think I’ve been a better teacher for focusing on the story, and I think my students would agree. I’m so happy to be here in Poland to hear more stories, to dig deeper into them, and to be able to share what I learn with my students.
I’m still collecting words; they’re just in Polish now, and I have to spell them phonetically.