The importance of teachable "hot" moments in the modern classroom

I recently had a "hot moment" or difficult conversation during a collaborative research project for our WW2 unit. During the lesson, my 7th grade class wasn't set up as for lectures, but for collaborative work, so at least I didn't have a big audience when sparks began to fly. We have been studying many aspects of the Holocaust atrocities by the Nazi war machine. In the middle of the week, one of my students approached me. She wanted to discuss her 'claim' or research statement for her informative paragraphs about topics connected WW2. She had been?reading Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl, for her lit circle disussions which was fantastic. The diary is a superb primary source, since it is a first hand account about war in the perspective of a Jewish teen. To be honest, my colleagues were reluctant to include this book as well as Surviving Hitler (notably repulsed by the section about mass graves). In their minds,?blunt and cruel snapshots of Nazi brutality towards their so called enemies of the state were too harsh for?adolescents. According to my co-workers, this material may bring up "hot moments," or daunting discourse about uncomfortable histories. These "hot moments" can be damaging to a teacher's career if students and parents complain to administration (which has happened in the past to many of my colleagues over the years). However, watering down the importance of the Holocaust during a WW2 unit outweighs any debate on avoiding difficult topics due to push back. Furthermore, not including the authentic discussions about the Holocaust in the class would be unethical thereby participating in the silencing of millions who didn't have the political right to breathe. This is just wrong.

"The fact that the US was also responsible for atrocious acts of violence during the war is an uncomfortable discussion, and one I couldn't deny."

I wanted to present all the facts and materials to the students about how many people were murdered in concentration camps, especially Jewish people and I wanted them to understand the bystander effect and how prejudice fed into creation of the Nazi party led by Hitler. Yet, like my fellow teachers, the fear?of these "hot moments" that may, at any minute, descend on me like an unstoppable avalanche was always present in the back of my mind. Fortunately, and to my surprise, the students were respectful-empathically analyzing and discussing big picture ideas in their groups. All was going just fine until an unassuming girl in heavy black Emo eyeliner appeared with her claim.?THE CLAIM. She held "Ann Frank" in her hands and without flinching asked me if she could research: "How the technological advancements engineered by the Nazis influenced and helped the scientific world of today." I thought to myself, have you been sleeping in class? Have you skipped the chapter on killing machines and how 80 percent of the Nazi army was horse drawn??

"But these difficult conversation must take place, and in the end we as teachers must be as honest and daring as our students confronting heavy questions with an understanding that teachable moments are not just for the very young."

She was falling for the fallacy that the Nazis possessed technological ingenius and not the truth-a seemingly backwards infantry led by a madman. I didn't want to scream at the her, although inside I was on fire...uhh indisputable "hot moment." Instead, I posed questions for her to think about. "What were the most well-known Nazi machines and systems?" Her first reply was tanks, and then submarines, and there was the Luftwaffe. I ask her to reflect on our discussions about the Holocaust. She finally said, the Nazis constructed?gas chambers and death camps. We also discussed the wording of her claim. The tone of her statement felt more like a glorification of the Third Reich, than a critical analysis of these machines and how they would live on in infamy. This claim could make her look like a sympathizer which was counterintuitive to the objective of the research assignment. Additionally her idealization of the once fascist state might damage her online reputation. I also had her think about?what kinds of technological intelligences the Nazis did leave behind and why this is concerning, and something not to take lightly.?She agreed with me that the falsehood of the Nazis'?IT power was another investigation she would pursue. Although, I was very direct with her, she finally arrived at the conclusion that perhaps her topic lacked hindsight and compassion for those who were killed at the hands of such genocidal?technologies.

Teachable moments and difficult conversations tend to be interchangeable when dealing with adolescents. However, students aren't the only ones who learn from challenging topics. The next day, after my interchange with the girl in the black eyeliner on Nazi war crimes and machines, I led a whole class discussion about the Nazi's role in genocide. A student raised her hand, and stared right in my eyes and asked, "what about the Nuclear Bomb? We made that." I couldn't contest that the Atomic bomb was and is the worst mechanical monster in the history of humanity. Many innocent Japanese were incinerated at the hands of US intelligence. "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,"Oppenheimer, the inventor of the bomb, quoted from?ancient Sanskrit after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The fact that the US was also responsible for atrocious acts of violence during the war is an uncomfortable discussion, and one I couldn't deny. The validity of my student's remark about the contradictions present in US History is very real, and just leaves educators with more unanswerable questions about the deeper meanings of life, and how we look at the connection between our country's attrition concerning past sins. But these difficult conversation must take place, and in the end we as teachers must be as honest and daring as our students confronting heavy questions with an understanding that teachable moments are not just for the very young. They are for us all.