Furthering Holocaust education
Ramapo College center selects new director of teacher training
The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Ramapo College in Mahwah has named educator Colleen Tambuscio as its pedagogy programs administrator in charge of teacher training on Holocaust education at Ramapo College and throughout Bergen County.
Ms. Tambuscio earned her bachelor’s degree in education of the hearing-impaired from the College of New Jersey. Motivated by the state mandate for teaching the Holocaust, she began attending workshops and went on to earn her master’s degree in Jewish-Christian Studies and Holocaust Education from Seton Hall University in South Orange.
Ms. Tambuscio taught deaf students for 17 years for Bergen County Special Services at Midland Park High School before moving to New Milford High School, where she provided special education services for the next 22 years. She retired in June.
Ms. Tambuscio’s credits include development and implementation of a national outreach program for Holocaust education for middle school and high school teachers nationwide and the creation and oversight of two general education electives — “The Holocaust, Genocide and Human Behavior” and “Contemporary Genocide: A Call to Action.”
As founder and president of the Council of Holocaust Educators, a statewide professional development organization involved in studies of the Holocaust and acts of genocide, Ms. Tambuscio and her colleagues host a daylong teacher-training conference as part of the New Jersey Education Association’s convention. More than 150 teachers attend this conference annually.
“This year marks the 30th anniversary of the New Jersey State Legislature’s unanimous 1994 vote to make New Jersey the second state in the nation to mandate that every public school student learn about the Holocaust and other historic acts of genocide,” Ms. Tambuscio said. “This is of particular importance now, as the Holocaust is being seen as a controversial topic to be taught in schools. But the Holocaust is irrefutable.”
Ms. Tambuscio emphasized the importance of continuing to support teachers of Holocaust studies. “The newly revised curriculum is available to teachers on an online platform,” she said. “In response to the recommended curriculum outlined by the New Jersey Commission for Holocaust education, I serve on their board and will be involved in updating its new online curriculum twice a year.”
With her interest in offering meaningful and experiential study and teaching of Holocaust education to students and teachers, Ms. Tambuscio has spent years planning and providing students with the opportunity to travel to Eastern Europe with her. “Each year my students walk away with a visceral understanding that much of the Jewish life they had encountered in the exhibitions and authentic learning sites they’d visited had an overwhelmingly tragic end,” she said, describing this as “facing the void.”
“We were fortunate in 1997 to have had Shalmi Barmore with us for our first teacher trip to Eastern Europe and Israel,” Ms. Tambuscio said. Mr. Barmore, an Israeli scholar who was Yad Vashem’s education director for more than 30 years, helped create an itinerary of intensive learning to support high school teachers and students studying the Holocaust.
As a result, Ms. Tambuscio developed a 15-day Holocaust study tour. Since then, she and Mr. Barmore have led 21 trips for high school students.
“My first high school student trip to Eastern Europe, in 1998, was planned while I was serving as a teacher of the deaf at Midland Park High School,” she said. “At the time, I co-taught Holocaust studies with Nick Capuano, a social studies teacher at the school. We brought four deaf students and five general education students with us, visiting historical sites in Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic. I designed the educational module and interpreted the whole trip for them. I was a passionate teacher of a marginalized community. It was important to me to teach my students about what happened to deaf people under the Nazi regime.”
Ms. Tambuscio described the experience as unforgettable.
“Then, in 1999, my students and I had the unique opportunity to connect with deaf Holocaust survivors in Budapest,” she said.
The meeting was arranged by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in New York. Ms. Tambuscio had met these survivors at Gallaudet University in Washington the year before and was so impressed with their story that she added Budapest to the itinerary. “This gave us a chance to meet with them and learn their stories,” she said. “When they told their stories, they communicated using Hungarian sign language. Then the interpreters translated their story to voice. Then the voice had to be translated to English, and then to American sign language. The experience for both the students and myself was transformative.”
“Our trip is not a boilerplate program. I don’t just assign the tour to a travel agency. I put time and effort and heart into designing my own meaningful education itinerary. Then I have travel consultants make the arrangements for my students.”
Students have to apply for the trip. The process starts in October for the next year’s April program. “Interested students have to submit to me their general knowledge of the history of that region and respond in personal reflection as to why the experience will be meaningful to them,” Ms. Tambuscio said.
Funding for the program comes from individuals, foundations, and organizations. “Word of mouth provides us with more funding,” Ms. Tambuscio said. “Once we determine what the trip cost will be per person, after determining the collection from donors and contributions from the student’s family, we often request that the parents, if comfortable, consider reaching out to organizations, companies, or corporations that might be willing to donate.”
Ms. Tambuscio is proud to report that she has accompanied more than 15 students annually on the Holocaust Study Tour. She has made connections with professionals in the field of Holocaust education throughout the years who either teach or are involved in related organizations in Jersey City, as well as in Kansas and California. “Each of them has shown interest in joining us on the trip to provide their knowledge and experience and to show their dedication to teaching this material,” she said. “Both the Oakland, California, and Kansas high schools are Catholic.
Since 2010, each trip includes a blog that both frames the day and offers a detailed history of the areas visited, written by either Ms. Tambuscio or another teacher. “There is always a culminating work of student reflections,” she said. “On a daily basis, students have the opportunity to contribute comments to the blog to post personal observations and comments. This allows their peers at home to remain informed while the Holocaust study tour group is abroad.
“As we embarked on our 21st Holocaust Study Tour this past April, our world had witnessed a horrific attack on Jewish communities in Israel,” she said. “As Alexandra Zapruder, author of ‘Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust,’ stated in a talk she gave in December 2023, ‘We are suspended between the shocking, unspeakable nature of what happened on October 7, 2023, and the impossible knowledge that if it bears any relationship to the Holocaust, it is a fragment of it.’
“We as human beings have to grapple with the incalculable impact of war on all sides,” Ms. Tambuscio said. “How do we set out to do this as we journey through Europe and study the history of genocide that took place during the Holocaust?”
Ms. Tambuscio has been on the board of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies for the last 22 years. In her capacity as pedagogy programs administrator, she will work closely with the center’s director, Dr. Jacob Labendz, to facilitate workshops, hold roundtable discussions with local educators, provide schools with programs for faculty and students, and help the college provide a certificate program for teachers (and others) who want to expand their knowledge.
Heather Lutz of Pascack Hills High School, who teaches English and Holocaust and genocide studies, is also on the board of the CHGS and works with Ms. Tambuscio on teacher-training programs. “Each fall and spring semester, Colleen and I co-facilitate an educator workshop in collaboration with Dr. Labendz and other scholars in the field,” Ms. Lutz said. “These workshops strive to provide educators with knowledge, resources, and sound pedagogy. It is a privilege to take part in their creation and implementation.”
The CHGS “offers roundtables three times a year to a smaller cohort of like-minded teachers who are given the opportunity to share best practices and ask challenging questions,” Ms. Tambuscio said. Ramapo College partners with 11 schools in New Jersey to support them in comprehensive teacher education.
Since August, Ms. Tambuscio has developed programming that fosters relationships with the teachers and their districts, and ultimately improves curricula in Holocaust and genocide education. “We are eager to dispel misinformation,” she said. “Studying the Holocaust teaches us the depths of what has been lost. We have to continue to support our teachers so that they can enact the mandate that exists in the state of New Jersey to teach hard truths about our history and shape a new generation of people who will think critically when confronted with genocidal intent in our world today.”
Go to www.ramapo.edu/holocaust/ orholocauststudytour.com for more information.
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