Teachers Who Go Above and Beyond the Job

Stopping Hate

High school teacher Colleen Bell was given the Leo Weiss Courage to Teach award for her efforts teaching her students about the Holocaust. Bell told the Union-Times, “My goal for it is to teach about hatred and intolerance and that we have the ability to love our neighbors.” Bell conceptualized the idea, created the curriculum and then taught the class about the Holocaust. Bell’s class now has the opportunity to visit the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum each year. She said that her goal is to provoke her students to think about the question: “Do we have the ability to prevent and stop genocide?”

Taking A Humane Approach

Hanan Al-Hroub grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Bethlehem and became a teacher at a high school in the West Bank. Al-Hroub was awarded the Global Teacher Award at a ceremony in Dubai, for her work to move children away from violent solutions. She wrote a book, We Play and We Learn of which she says, “We can teach children to be effective and inventive through various contexts which include entertainment, drawing and movement.”

“We need to help children with questioning, dialogue, thinking and feeling to help them express themselves,” Al-Hrboub said. Luminaries such as the Pope, Joe Biden, and Prince William have praised Hanan Al-Hroub’s work.