Margot Stern Strom Teaching Award Helps Bring Together Students from New York and Rwanda

By Yael Glick, Humanities Teacher, Satellite Academy, New York

For many years Satellite Academy High School, an alternative school on the Lower East Side of Manhattan has used the Facing History and Ourselves curriculum to inspire, educate and teach tolerance to at-risk students. 

Starting in the spring of 2005, following the Facing History Holocaust and Human Behavior summer seminar, I co-taught my first of many Facing History classes with my colleague Amy Rathgeb. We were amazed to see how our students' perspectives were genuinely changed in a way that is not possible with traditional history curricula. Facing History does not simply present historical facts about genocide but instead pushes students to think critically, make connections and study human choices and behavior. Many of our students had in fact studied the Holocaust in their old schools but never understood what connection it had with their lives until taking a Facing History class.

Facing History curriculum uses the Holocaust as a case study on human behavior and encourages the teachings of other genocides so that students can make deeper connections. Our students were particularly moved by what they learned about the 1994 Rwandan genocide and would always ask insightful questions about life in post-genocide Rwanda, which is still healing and reconciling.

In the summer of 2007, Ms. Rathgeb and I had a rare opportunity to find primary source answers to our students' questions. We traveled to Rwanda and worked in a village established for orphans of the genocide.  We took with us our New York students' questions to the Rwandans as well as documents our students had prepared detailing their day to day lives in New York City. Our Rwandan students then responded to the New York students' inquiries and films through photography and by creating videos of their own. They shared moving testimony about their life before, during and after the genocide.  At the end of the month we celebrated their work with a final art exhibit in the village. We found that our Rwandan students became just as interested in the experience of teenagers in New York as the New Yorkers had been in their lives.  After our return home, our students from New York began communicating with the Rwandans by email, sending each other text and photos on a regular basis.

We knew from past experience when we brought our Facing History students to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. that travel can be a powerful tool to extend the lessons that happen in the classroom. With this in mind, we sought to make travel a part of the students' education about the genocide in Rwanda. Ms.Rathgeb and I founded a non profit organization, Kuleba Exchange. Kuleba Exchange's goal is to create opportunities for disadvantaged youth to develop leadership skills while engaging with students from other cultures through travel.

We began fundraising immediately to make our dreams a reality. Our enthusiasm and passion spread; we were joined by Satellite's social worker and  Kuleba Exchange's Vice President,  Aimee Lichtenfeld.   Despite our collective efforts we still came out short financially.  It was then that we were honored to learn that we were granted a Margot Stern Strom Teaching Award from Facing History and Ourselves. Our trip was now possible.  In the summer of 2008 Kuleba Exchange brought four New York City high school graduates (and Facing History class alumni) to Rwanda to meet the Rwandan students they were emailing in person and engage in a two week cultural exchange.

The trip was a life changing experience for all involved.  The long lasting effects of the exchange are best expressed in the words of our students:

"I will never forget the people here in Rwanda because I believe they have truly made me into a better person...I now know that it is not what you wear or what you look like that makes you a good person, it is the way you think, the way you treat others and the way you use your heart in a positive way."- Lissette, New York

"Really it was an amazing time to me and to my friends and others in our village to have our guests. The friendship of all of them makes our lives get hope and our feeling back again." -Gilbert, Rwanda

This upcoming summer Kuleba Exchange plans on continuing the exchange that began last summer in Rwanda.  We hope to bring several young Rwandan students to the United States. Please visit our website for more information.