University Communications and Marketing

“Worlds Apart But Not Strangers” seminar coming to MSU Billings 

Inquiry on teaching the Holocaust and Indian Education for All is June 9-15 

University Communications and Marketing, 657-2266

MSU BILLINGS NEWS—Elk River Writing Project, a branch of the National Writing Project at Montana State University Billings, is sponsoring “Worlds Apart But Not Strangers” June 9 through 15. This seminar focuses on Holocaust education and Indian Education for All (IEFA) and will be held on campus at MSU Billings.

“Worlds Apart But Not Strangers” is a seminar for upper-elementary-to-college educators. This intensive, inquiry-based seminar bridges past and present as participants build background knowledge about the Holocaust and IEFA while gaining writing-based classroom strategies for creating community and processing difficult information.

Facilitators for “Worlds Apart But Not Strangers” include Wendy Warren, who coordinates the programs worldwide, as well as Brenda Johnston and Marcia Beaumont, both Montana educators. Notable features of this program are close collaborations with Congregation Beth Aaron, Human Rights advocates and cultural experts from Montana’s tribal groups with field experiences to Beth Aaron Synagogue and Northern Cheyenne and Crow lands.

This is the third time Elk River Writing Project has hosted the seminar. Sponsors include The Olga Lengyel Institute (TOLI), Humanities Montana and the Judaica Fund at the MSU Billings Foundation.

Over 500 teachers in the U.S. and Europe have enrolled in TOLI training seminars focusing on Holocaust education and human rights this summer. Nearly 230 teachers have signed up for TOLI summer seminars in the U.S., which begin next month. The training seminars will take place in 10 cities around the U.S. In Europe, 280 educators will take part in seminars hosted in eight countries, with new additions in Vilnius, Lithuania, and Kiev, Ukraine.

TOLI provides professional development seminars for educators in the U.S. and abroad that link the lessons of the Holocaust and other genocides to current world events, thereby working with teachers to promote a human rights and social justice agenda in their classrooms.

For more information contact Tami Haaland, director of Elk River Writing Project, 406-657-2948 or thaaland@msubillings.edu.