Tour for Humanity was at a Toronto high school today. It was a very busy day with 6 workshops in total plus many drop-ins from staff and students over the lunch period. Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) Educator Elena taught 3 workshops on the Canadian Experience, 2 of Global Perspectives on Genocide, and 1 special workshop, an abridged version of Simon's Story for a group of developmentally delayed students.This special workshop was definitely one of the highlights of the day. It was first period and several students were very excited to be on the bus, so much so that one of the support workers had to help one boy stay seated and quiet. The students were of a variety of backgrounds and comprehension levels so Elena focused on the idea of needing to respect people who might be different from us in some way. Elena started the workshop with the cultural perspectives game to get the students comfortable with her. They loved this activity and everybody made at least one guess. They had a hard time with the concept of religion so Elena asked them to think about the holidays they celebrate at home and explained which religion each holiday came from. Elena also made sure they understood that many Jewish people were killed during World War II simply because they had a different religion. Elena found that several kids were familiar with Hitler and knew he was an evil man. She went over the definition of what the Holocaust was and how many people were killed. Elena wanted to make sure that she didn't overwhelm or scare anyone also so she really focused on Simon Wiesenthal and how he decided to make the world a better place after seeing so much hatred and violence. We watched the Heroes video and talked about the fact that each and every person has the power to make the lives of people around them better and that we don't need to let hateful people control the rest of us. All of the other workshops throughout the day were successful as well and we had tons of praise from different teachers and staff throughout the day.