Launch of the Second Stage of the project "Teaching Materials against discrimination, xenophobia and anti-Semitism"
Early October 2009 became the starting point for the second stage of the all-European project "Teaching Materials against discrimination, anti-Semitism and xenophobia". This all-European project under the aegis and support of OSCE/ODIHR (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights) and active involvement of the Anne Frank House (Amsterdam) started in Ukraine as long ago as 2005 and its first stage included development and publication of Ukrainian versions for three workbooks for secondary school students and a teachers' guide with methodical advice. Both workbooks and the guide concern topics of Jewish history, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, racism, discrimination etc. Currently the project has been launched in over 12 European countries, each having national organization responsible for the adaptation of the materials to historical and social context of the country concerned. In Ukraine such responsibility lay on Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies and Association of Teachers of History and Civics "Nova Doba". The Ukrainian teaching materials have been adapted and published. The Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine gave them recommendation for use in educational process. Two two-day seminars were held for experts-multipliers. A group of experts gave testing lessons in schools and produced suggestions and recommendations that were taken into account in production of the teachers' guide and the 2nd run of the teaching materials.
Such activities promoted Ukraine's quick transfer to the following stage of the project - organization of the methodological seminars for teachers on ways of using the Teaching materials in class. During the coming year such one-day seminars will be held by Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies in all oblast centers in cooperation with oblast or municipal teacher-training institutes. First on the list were seminars in Kyiv (1/10/2009), Cherkassy (8/10/2009) and Chernihiv (29/10/2009). Each seminar, owing to the help of local teacher-training institutes, comprised 25 history and civics teachers. The participants were offered a balanced programme of workshops and lectures aimed at experience exchange, discovering the potential of TMs in classroom, acquaintance with the workbooks and expert advice on their usage. On completing the seminar every participant gets a set of three workbooks and teachers' guide and a sample order blank for TMs, since every participant has a possibility to order sets of teaching materials for their class from Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies. Filled out evaluation forms for the first three seminars testify to the interest of participants in the project concerned and to the great perspectives for dissemination and implementation of TMs in Ukrainian schools.
The next planned cities of the project are Zhytomyr, Kharkiv, Vinnytsa, Chernivtsi and Khmelnitskiy
Vitalii Bobrov
Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies
