Local teacher altered by ADL course
By ALAN SMASON
When Beth Hook was selected this past year to attend an Anti-Defamation League course on Holocaust Education, she thought it would largely be a teacher-centered workshop. Prodded by a fellow teacher, Hook, a practicing Catholic, is an English teacher at Archbishop Chapelle in Metairie.
At first she was interested in teaching a course that included literature written about the Holocaust such as Elie Wiesel’s “Night.”
Beth Hook, left, listens attentively with a teacher from Houston at the Holocaust Education conference in Washington, D.C. (Photo courtesy Anti-Defamation League)
The only resident of Louisiana selected by the national Anti-Defamation League, Hook was not prepared for the five-day course held July 21-26, that revealed much more than she was prepared for at the outset.
“I thought it was going to be strictly in-depth information about the Holocaust, the reasons that led to it and maybe some background about Hitler,” she admitted. “That was a very small part of what this was.”
Each year the Holocaust Education program invites 40 teachers, principals or other administrators nationwide to apply for acceptance as a course participant. Parts of the course are taught at high profile venues such as the United States Holocaust Museum and Georgetown University.
“It was really focused so much on the history of anti-Semitism and current anti-Semitism,” she said.
Surprising to her, the course centered on Jewish relations with the Catholic Church and the effect of Notre Aetate, the document that began under the administration of Pope John XXIII and was released as a part of the Vatican II Council under Pope Paul VI. This is the document that is generally considered a new starting point between Jews and Catholics.
Hook began to consider Nostra Aetate as “healing” between Jews and Catholics, coming as it did after centuries of antipathy. “This was all new to me because, being born in New Orleans, I had no idea that anti-Semistism existed here.”
During a workshop at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, Beth Hook, left, considers how to apply teaching methods to Holocaust materials. (Photo courtesy Anti-Defamation League)
She was also impressed with many of the oral histories and filmed accounts of Holocaust survivors she studied during the course, especially those at the Holocaust Museum. She pondered how she might take this information back to her classes of 8th and 9th graders at Chapelle.
Since her return to her classroom, Hook has become energized. No longer content to teach just English, she is seeking to teach a course on the Holocaust, not just one that considers literature.
She plans to contact well-known local Holocaust survivors to further the course and bring the lessons of the Shoah to her students. Hook acknowledges it all began with the five-day ADL course in Washington. She now feels that debt is being paid forward.
“We started up a Facebook page so we could share what we’re doing with our classrooms,” she continued. She expressed thanks to the ADL for the course and for the opportunity to have been a part of it, funded entirely by a grant from Eileen Ludwig Greenland.
“We shared something so important and so big,” Hook concluded.
