Although it is commonplace for middle school kids to have popular singers, movie stars and athletes as their heroes, middle school teacher Janis Friesler wants more for her students.
In fact, her efforts to help her eighth grade English students at the Frank Lloyd Wright Middle School in West Allis to know other kinds of heroes — like the people who saved Jews from the German Nazis or blacks from slavery — have earned her national recognition.
In a telephone interview this week, Friesler explained that she wants her students to know that “ordinary people can do extraordinary things under extraordinary circumstances.”
Moreover, there aren’t any Jewish children in her classes, and as a Jewish person herself, she said she felt it important for her students to know about the Holocaust.
Friesler had been teaching them “The Diary of Anne Frank” for many years. But her belief that they should know more was strengthened after she participated in a Milwaukee Jewish Council for Community Relations-sponsored trip for educators to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. last fall.
So with the help of a federal grant to her school that enabled the school to work with Co-nect — a Massachusetts-based education reform, consulting and professional development company — Friesler developed a project for her students.
In two-person teams over a period of six to eight weeks, the students would study the Holocaust and the 19th century U.S. “Underground Railroad” that smuggled slaves to freedom; and learn about “rescuers, survivors and resistance” through research in libraries and on the Internet. They would hear a presentation by a Holocaust survivor and hear a local police officer discuss hate crimes.
They would select someone they knew personally or from research whom they regard as an “unsung hero.” And the students would have to create presentations about their findings, using computer programs to provide such multi-media illustration material as music, animation, art, even poetry.
The results proved so impressive that Co-nect gave Friesler its top prize in its recent competition for such projects, which drew 60 submissions from all over the country.
“It contained powerful subject matter and did an excellent job connecting the concepts from the Holocaust and the Underground Railroad to the concept of heroism,” said Kathryn Cotter, director of the contest. “It was clear that the students understood the concepts and could connect the ideas from two different eras. It was the clear winner.”
Friesler will receive $1,000 and a trip to Toronto to present her project at Co-nect’s conference in October. She also will speak about the project at a school reform conference sponsored by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction in April.
“It’s just really exciting,” Friesler said. Moreover, “it’s a coup for the state to have somebody from Wisconsin win a contest like this for a school reform project.”
Friesler has been a teacher in West Allis-West Milwaukee district for 33 years and will retire at the end of next year. She has a master’s degree in computer science education and will be consulting in that field after retirement, she said.
She and her husband, Perry, live in Mequon and belong to Congregation Beth Israel.
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