On Monday, the Tour for Humanity and Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center Educator (FSWC) Elena was in Ajax. She taught three Canadian Experience workshops to Grades 7-8 students and 2 workshops of Simon's Story to the Grades 5-6 students. In the Canadian Experience program, students learn about a variety of difficult topics in Canadian history including slavery, the Indian Residential Schools System, the voyage of the SS St. Louis and the systemic internment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War. Following a review of the past, current issues including cyber bullying and modern-day examples of intolerance are examined and discussed.   Simon’s Story introduces elementary school students to the Holocaust in an age-appropriate manner. Students learn techniques to deal with injustice and ideas for creating positive change. Stereotypes, racism and prejudice are defined and discussed in an age-appropriate manner.  

The students were active participants all day.  One of the highlights of the day for Elena was a conversation that followed the Cultural Perceptions icebreaker game. The students guess different things about the presenter (Elena), one of them being where they think her family came from before moving to Canada. After telling the students about her Czech/Irish background, Elena asked them if any of them had more than one cultural/ethnic background in their own families. Kids were very eager to talk about their own unique Canadian heritage. One young lady’s dad was Indonesian/Chinese and her mom was from Guyana/ Trinidad. Another young woman was half Indian, half Irish. One young man told us that all of his family was from Jamaica but before that they came from all over Africa. A very blonde boy was proud to announce he had Aboriginal ancestry, along with a mixture of Irish, Polish, and Ukrainian. This was a very "Canadian" moment and a positive reminder for the students that one can't understand how complicated and unique people are just by looking at the surface. The older students were a bit quieter but no less interested in talking about the material. The Holocaust was very fresh in their minds because they were finishing a unit on Holocaust literature. Each class had read a different book (Diary of Anne Frank, Hana's Suitcase, etc.) but all of the Grade 8 students had watched the film, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. One question that Elena spent some time working through was how the Nazis came to power. One student asked why the German people "let" the Nazis take control of the country.  Elena made sure they understood the sad reality that in fact the Nazis were elected in the legal democratic elections of 1933.