Seton Hill will waive tuition costs for 15 local teachers to complete an online genocide and Holocaust education certificate program starting in March.

The nine-credit program features three courses that will give secondary education teachers the strategies to address topics like genocide in the classroom, said James Paharik, director of the university’s National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education.

When a donor approached the center, using the funds to help local teachers educate their students on genocide was a give-in, Paharik said.

“The media are often very superficial in their approaches to covering these events, so we want to give teachers the historical knowledge that they need to contextualize current events, breaking events and give them the knowledge and skills that they need to teach this in an objective, nonpartisan kind of way,” Paharik said.

The donors and their financial contribution will remain anonymous at this time, Paharik said, but the donation was in the range of $100,000. The funding is only guaranteed for the coming academic year, he said.

The program will accept applicants on a first-come, first-served basis, spokesperson Jennifer Reeger said. It is open to teachers of grades 6-12 in Westmoreland and surrounding counties. A bachelor’s degree and current teacher certification are required to apply, she said.

The first course will be a hands-on inspection of teaching methods, Paharik said, and the second course — which will take place over the summer — will provide a historical overview of 20th century genocides past and present.

The third course, starting next fall, will focus on using narrative to discuss the Holocaust, a strategy to help students “empathize with people who were affected by the incidents of genocide,” Paharik said.

It will overlap with the center’s international Ethel LeFrak Holocaust Education Conference, which is held every few years, Paharik said. Students in the certificate program will have a chance to meet acclaimed genocide and Holocaust educators at the conference.

Paharik hopes the certificate program encourages teachers to collaborate on teaching these difficult topics.

“What I’m hoping is that we build a network of teachers who support each other so that after the program is completed, we’ll get all of the participants together and have them share what they learned from the program and their experience teaching this material to these students,” Paharik said. “We want to build a real sense of a cohort of teachers.”

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