Fort Payne Middle School teacher Jeannie Woods reviews lessons with her eighth-grade advanced English class on Thursday.
These are the gates at Auschwitz II concentration camp.
Track her trip
To keep up online with Fort Payne Middle School English teacher Jeannie Woods' trip to Auschwitz, go to her blog at www.jwoodsclass.blogspot.com.
FORT PAYNE, Ala. -- A Northeast Alabama middle school teacher bound for Auschwitz in Krakow, Poland, next month hopes to return with first-hand memories of the infamous concentration camp run by the Nazis during World War II.
Fort Payne Middle School seventh- and eighth-grade language and arts teacher Jeannie Woods, now in her ninth year in front of a classroom, believes her experience will help her students better understand what happened 70 years ago.
"It's exciting and a little scary. I have never been to Europe," said Woods, 30, as she reviewed English material with her eighth-graders on Wednesday. "It'll be out of the comfort zone for me, and that'll be good."
Woods is among 25 teachers from 11 countries chosen to participate in a unique professional development program called Auschwitz: The Past is Present. Woods and two dozen fellow teachers were picked for the program by the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation, the Institute for Visual History and Education, and Discovery Education.
Woods' father, who died when Woods was very young, served in the U.S. Navy during the Korean Conflict and had a collection of books and literature about World War II history that got her interested in that period years ago.
"I got more interested in it as I became a teacher, and so much of the literature for junior high students sort of centers around that history as it's becoming age-appropriate," she said.
"Every time I teach anything Holocaust-related, the students just have so many questions because they're introduced to Anne Frank in the sixth grade and they're just overwhelmed that something so atrocious actually happened," she said. "There's a lot to learn."
Woods said she will prepare for the trip by studying more about the Holocaust and readying herself for the emotional experience of talking with survivors the group will meet in Poland.
"It's awful and horrible and terrifying," she said of the setting for those survivors. "I want to be able to share that first-hand research, hearing the story from the person who lived those events."
These are the remnants of the gas chambers that the Germans destroyed when they abandoned the camp.
Eighth-grader Laura Ellen Rigdon said she was excited about her teacher's trip and hopes to expand what she learned from her summer assignment to read "The Devil's Arithmetic," a historical fiction novel published in 1988 by Jane Yolen.
Laura Ellen said she wants to "hear everything about the whole experience, see the pictures, hear what the survivors told her. I think it's a good experience for her because she loves teaching us about it."
The excitement is shared by fellow teachers, too.
"You would have thought she won the lottery," computer education teacher Suzanne Camp said of her friend's knock on her classroom door to tell her the news about being selected.
"We jumped up and down like little girls," Woods added.
Woods will attend a four-day workshop designed to deepen teachers' understanding of the historical landscape of Poland before, during and after the Holocaust and add to their knowledge of authentic sites like Auschwitz.
The program will begin in Warsaw on Jan. 23 at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews and end at the official ceremonies at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum on Jan. 27 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
Contact staff writer Ben Benton at bbenton@timesfreepress.com or twitter.com/BenBenton or www.facebook.com/ben.benton1 or 423-757-6569.