Teacher Training Seminars 

“School and Memory – Debates on Education”

The Museum’s education department and the Anne Frank Center in Argentina hosted two training seminars focused on learning, reflecting on and visiting both museums. These seminars included 60 professors from various middle and high schools. The main goal was to reflect on the subject of memory in schools, and the way to introduce its complexity into the ongoing classroom discussions.

The first training seminar for teachers was hosted at the ESMA Museum and Memory Site on Friday, April 12th. Its participants included authorities from both institutions, as well as a presentation by sociologist, professor and teacher Guillermo Levy and sociologist and CONICET researcher Daniel Feierstein. This first training session inaugurated a joint effort that will continue with future actions and activities for teachers.

Guillermo Levy’s speech focused on a 2015 joint research conducted by his team and the country’s Ministry of Education, which surveyed 2500 senior high school students across the country on what and how they learned about subjects such as the last civic-military dictatorship, the Malvinas War, the Holocaust and other genocides, and presidents elected post-dictatorship, among other important events. He also presented the results of this investigation.

The second seminar was held at the Anne Frank Center in Argentina on Saturday, April 13th. The experiences and exchanges of the previous day were reviewed in order to reflect together on the best ways to teach students about memory, identity, participation and Human Rights in the classroom.

At the event the teachers held two workshops, Freedom To Be and The Pedagogy of Memory. In the Freedom To Be workshop they experienced an activity carried out by their students during their visit to the Anne Frank Museum. They discussed concepts like identity, discrimination, violence, justice and participation, and shared their experiences. In The Pedagogy of Memory workshop, participants considered notions related to the tools that work best when discussing complex and painful issues in the classroom, as well as the best strategies to do so. Also, teachers analyzed local memories and experiences in the classroom in order to determine different practical resources: young adults literature, films, testimonies, and paintings, among others. The program also included a complete visit to the Anne Frank Center Museum.

ASSIGNMENT FOR COLLABORATIVE WORK AT THE SEMINARS

Teachers were asked to each select a photo taken during one of the visits to the ESMA Museum and Site of Memory and the Anne Frank Museum in order to share the experience of these seminars. The idea was that it should be an image that symbols the experience and represents a prominent or important moment that they would like to share with their colleagues. The chosen images were uploaded through the Padlet application. To access the virtual wall, you must click on the following link: https://padlet.com/paupaus/4iqy6omlm43n

Teacher Training Seminar

«Being Women at ESMA» Gender Perspective and State Terrorism.

A teacher seminar will be held in July together with the Ministry of Education (ESI and Education & Memory) to raise awareness on sexual violence against women during State terrorism and to connect the issue with the present day, as it is a priority interest of young people. The meeting also aims to provide tools within the framework of Comprehensive Sexual Education in order to address in classrooms the themes of the temporary exhibition «Being Women at ESMA».