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Over the past two years, multiple instances of antisemitic hate speech occurred within the Menlo Park City School District. Since then, school administrators have worked to increase education, awareness and communication about hate to foster a future of compassion among teachers and students.
Hillview Middle School partnered with the Jewish Family and Children’s Services Holocaust Center and the Mobile Museums of Tolerance to bring Holocaust and genocide education on campus. The event ran from Feb. 26 through Feb. 28 and included an immersive learning experience in the museum and a training for all teachers at Hillview Middle School.
“We really wanted to be proactive, moving forward around educating our students about the impact of their words and actions, about the historical context behind some of the things that they were hearing and then knowing what’s happening on a local, state and national level,” said Hillview Principal Danielle O’Brien.
Curriculum about the Holocaust and World War II are not part of the state education standard for middle schools, but district educators believe that starting discussions about that history at the sixth-grade level will greatly limit hate, she added.
O’Brien said she is working toward getting Hillview Middle School certified as a No Place for Hate school. The program aims to improve school climates by focusing on hate issues that need to be addressed in the community.
Through the mobile museum exhibit, sixth-graders learned about the story of Anne Frank, taking away lessons about empathy and compassion. Seventh-graders were taught about civil rights and learned how they can use their voices to stand up for what they believe in.
The Mobile Museums of Tolerance is an extension of a Los Angeles museum. The mobile version is a project of the California Teachers Collaborative to increase accessibility to the museum’s exhibits with the goal to reach communities that are in rural or disadvantaged areas, said Franka Rissman, program manager of the Mobile Museums of Tolerance.
There are currently a total of six mobile museums across the country.
Inside the mobile exhibit, students and teachers learned about the Holocaust through interactive lessons using tablets, said Jackie Young, content and learning specialist of the Mobile Museums of Tolerance. The interior of the museum is fitted with 30 seats and large screens for presentations and visuals.
Expanding education about hate
The California Teachers Collaborative, an initiative of Jewish Family and Children’s Services, uses patterns in history and current events to “inspire youth and adults to be morally courageous and inspire empathy,” said Morgan Blum Schneider, director of the JFCS Holocaust Center.
“We don’t want to look at these events as isolated, events that operate in a vacuum, but we want to look at patterns of dehumanization and propaganda. The collaborative is committed to elevating underrepresented voices and experiences,” she added.
Having discussions about hate, genocide and current events can be difficult for teachers to facilitate in classrooms, said O’Brien. In order to support educators around leading conversations about sensitive topics, the California Teachers Collaborative has created a training model for teachers to learn through monthly meetings and serve as a resource to be prepared to answer their students’ questions.
Jewish Family and Children’s Services has curated a digital library with teaching materials about the Cambodian, Uyghur, Rwandan and Guatemalan genocides and more. These lesson plans are available for educators to use in their classrooms.
Ongoing efforts within MPCSD
Throughout the country, over 10,000 antisemetic incidents were recorded by the Anti-Defamation League between Oct. 7, 2023 to Sept. 24, 2024. As antisemitic sentiments continue to grow out of the news about the Israeli and Palestinian conflict, local schools like MPCSD are working toward combatting hate speech through education and awareness.
The visit from the Mobile Museum of Tolerance and the JFCS Holocaust Center is part of a broader initiative from the school district to continuously hold conversations about harmful speech and actions. Since January, every second- through eighth-grade classroom in MPCSD has been visited by a school administrator to hear a presentation about hate.
In February 2024, Superintendent Kristen Gracia hosted a community meeting at Hillview inviting community members and parents to hold discussions about the district’s goal to increase awareness and denounce hate speech of all kinds. Gracia said the meeting was about transparency and it allowed parents to share their own experiences and concerns directly to her.
“[These] events are part of an ongoing commitment to our district’s vision to educate and empower students in an effort to strengthen understanding and grow student belonging,” said Gracia. “We hope to be a model of how to lean in during challenging times, seek to understand and then work together as a community to create meaningful learning opportunities for students.”
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