CHUTZ-POW! Teacher’s Resources
Teaching students about the Holocaust is a daunting prospect for educators, both due to the harshness of the subject matter and the wide scope of information available. The Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh is keenly aware of the challenges that most teachers face in this area, including:
- Limited time to learn enough about the Holocaust to teach with confidence. -The complexity in conveying its cultural, historical and social importance
- Determining what approach is most appropriate for students.
- Developing modern lesson plans that are engaging and accessible.
- Integrating Holocaust studies with other areas of study in unobtrusive ways.
Our solution has been surprisingly simple: telling these stories in graphic prose via comic books. For decades, educators have understood the scholastic and social power of using comic books in curriculums. With minimal guidance, the language of comics is accessible, intimate, and stimulating.
Classpacks
CHUTZ-POW! Classpacks are designed to help educators begin the learning process right out of the box – literally! – by curating a learning experience their students will retain for a lifetime.
Each Classpack consists of 15-30 sets of CHUTZ-POW! Volumes 1-4– enough to accommodate medium-to-large classes – filled with over twenty stories from the Holocaust about inspiring Upstanders. Premium Classpacks also come with a Teacher’s Resource Guide full of resources, such as background information, glossary of terms, historical timeline, and lesson plans, as well as a Comic-Book Primer with instructional language on comic books.
To encourage our readers to become custodians of the stories in each volume, individual sets of CHUTZ-POW! Volumes 1-4 are created and priced with the intention that students are gifted their comic books to keep.
For more information on ordering, please contact:
Marcel L. Walker, CHUTZ-POW! Project Coordinator
mwalker@hcpgh.org | 412-939-7292
CHUTZ-POW! Teacher’s Resource Guide
The CHUTZ-POW! Superheroes of the Holocaust Teachers’ Resource Guide is designed to build context and provide foundational information for teachers teaching about the Holocaust.
• The Introduction provides background on the use of comic books to tell these stories and some guidelines for Holocaust educators.
• Part 1 provides a comprehensive background of various topics and themes found in the CHUTZ-POW! series that can be used in conjunction with CHUTZ-POW! or on its own to provide a general context for teaching about the Holocaust.
• Part 2 is a set of additional resources to be used alongside the provided lesson plans or as you develop your own.
• Part 3 walks through a selected CHUTZ-POW! story (“Parallel Choices” – Vol. One) and pulls out topics and definitions presented in the guide.
• Part 4 consists of five sample lesson plans and discussion questions for each story in the series that can be used in your classroom.
Incorporated throughout this resource guide are suggested/recommended books, articles, and other resources to further your understanding about foundational Holocaust-related topics.