Teachers’ Workshops
We are holding two workshops for experienced and newly-qualified teachers and PGCE students to examine ways in which refugee history and other sensitive issues, particularly associated with the Holocaust and population movements and resettlements in the aftermath of the Second World War, can be incorporated into teaching across the curriculum.
Specialist speakers will give a series of short talks, followed by activities and discussion in groups, on creative whole-school approaches to teaching such difficult and potentially divisive topics.
Participants will explore how historical perspectives can be used to encourage students to reflect on and challenge commonly held assumptions about refugees, migrants and asylum-seekers; the activities of humanitarian organizations (including faith-based organizations); immigration and ethnic and cultural identities; social conflict and community cohesion.
Teachers and students attending these workshops also receive an Educational Resource Pack ‘When the War Was Over: European Refugees After 1945’, developed by members of the project team in consultation and collaboration with specialist educational advisors, experienced teachers and school students.
This Resource Pack comprises a 48-page Teachers’ Guide, 20 Resource Cards and a DVD, together offering extensive historical background information, lesson plans, extension activities, student worksheets, maps, audiovisual material (including contemporary newsreel footage and oral history interviews) and a large number of primary sources from the war and postwar period (including government documents, police reports, newspaper extracts, diverse pictures and photographs, and first-person testimonies). The workshops involve discussion of the Resource Pack and ways to use it creatively and effectively in the classroom.