Today, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies (FSWC) provided the Leadership 101 workshop to high school students at a secondary school northeast of Toronto. FSWC Educator Elena had the opportunity to work with a really interesting mixture of students from Grades 9 to 12. They were specifically selected by their teachers because of their unique qualities and potential as student leaders. The workshop served as a starting point for this group of 35 students to start their own “social justice” club at school. Elena split them into random groups so they wouldn’t be with their normal group of friends and this led to some very interesting conversations. One of the first activities Elena led was to have these groups brainstorm lists of traits that might make someone a GOOD leader, versus traits that might make someone a 'bad' leader. This was interpreted in lots of interesting ways. For example, one group listed a number of traits, like charisma, and said that they could be either bad or good, stating it all depended on who the leader was and whether they were working to represent the interest of their community or were acting for selfish reasons. Elena appreciated this astute observation.

Another interesting moment came when the “Stand Up” activity was being led, where students stand if they have had experience with a statement that Elena reads out - it's an activity that looks to identify and focus on similarities. This is always a really great activity for stimulating discussions but today’s conversation was exceptional because of some of the fascinating anecdotes people shared when Elena asked if they had experienced discrimination. One student said that she felt that she was constantly judged by the family of her boyfriend because she is from a British background but they are very proud of their Greek heritage and would prefer if their son dated a Greek girl. There were also some very interesting contributions from teachers. The teacher who organized our visit today shared the fact that her father was a kid in Germany during World War II and was enlisted in the German army at the age of 16 (thankfully, this was very close to the end of the war). She said that she had experienced a lot of hatred for her German ancestry growing up and that she was assaulted when she was 17 for that reason. Another teacher said that for a long time he was nervous when sharing his last name with people because he is Serbian and a lot of people blame Serbians for the ethnic cleansing during the war in Yugoslavia in the 1990s.