Feb 21, 2017
A handwritten page of poetry in Yiddish written by Shmerke Kaczerginski in the Vilna Ghetto in 1943.“My Lullaby” At the bottom of the page is part of the well known poem “Ponary” (via Yad VaShem)
INTRODUCTION
In an effort to pool the wisdom and questions acquired from our contributors’ work in the classroom, In geveb regularly polls Yiddish instructors on topics related to Yiddish pedagogy. In our Loyt Di Lerers series, we compile ideas and best practices for teachers who teach Yiddish, teach about Yiddish, and teach with texts from Yiddish sources. The responses to these polls offer a cross-section of the opinions, approaches, and experiences of Yiddish instructors from Los Angeles to Tel Aviv, from children’s programs to university classes to continuing education courses, from new teachers to those with a lifetime of experience.
We are proud to announce that this pedagogy poll is being conducted in partnership with the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
In our Loyt di Lerers series we have gathered teachers’ thoughts about Yiddish textbooks, focused on the question of whether and how to use Weinreich’s College Yiddish, asked teachers to describe how they conduct the first day of Yiddish class, and learned how instructors teach with texts translated from Yiddish. In our next poll we ask Holocaust educators how they teach with and about Yiddish. This pedagogy poll is being conducted in partnership with the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
If you teach about the Holocaust in a museum or public forum, a religious school classroom, a literature or history course, or in any other setting, we invite you to participate in a short survey on the use of Yiddish in Holocaust education. We want to whether or how you consider teaching about Yiddish as part of your Holocaust curriculum, how you present Yiddish letters, songs, and texts, and which texts you use.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences with the In geveb teaching community.
