A teacher from Bear Grass Charter School has been selected from over 360 applicants to attend the 2026 Teachers’ Trip to Poland.

The program will bring together 40 North Carolina educators who teach about the Holocaust, to an intensive eight-day educational seminar in Poland.

Seventh-grade English language arts teacher Hollie Coltrain Hines will leave for Poland July 19 and return July 27.

Hines, who received her master’s degree in elementary education from North Carolina State University, is entering her eighth year of teaching. She taught at South Creek Middle for two years and this school year will be her fifth at Bear Grass Charter.

She has visited the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum several times.

“I feel like I’ve always been drawn to that time period,” Hines explained.

At Bear Grass, she teaches a three-week unit on the Holocaust each year.

“We complete a novel study on “Four Perfect Pebbles” by Marion Blumenthal Lazan,” she said.

Her upcoming trip to Poland will deepen her comprehension and compassion as she walks through areas some of the Holocaust’s most brutal events took place.

“We will visit synagogues, mass graves, concentration camps, museums and the Warsaw archives where they were able to hide Jewish information and identification, they were later able to find and share,” she explained.

“This trip is about the Holocaust and genocide studies,” she said, acknowledging the emotional weightiness. “We have a lot of downtime in the evening, so it will be a good time for me to reflect and think about what I can take back to the classroom.

“We are going to study prewar Jewish life, which will help us see individuals and not just numbers,” she explained.

She continued, “We are also going to study ‘acts of resistance,’ which I think resonates with kids more — especially since they seem to know all about resisting things.”

Hines said that resistance education is important.

“It is important to see how certain individuals resisted Nazi ideology — even down to little kids smuggling in food, [and others] forging paperwork. They had a voice. If my kids can learn to be a voice, then I feel like I’ve done my job – especially with antisemitism on the rise again,” she continued.

The subject is never easy.

“When I introduce the unit, the kids usually have some really tough questions. There are ideas that are really hard for them to grasp,” she said.

Today’s seventh graders have a hard time visualizing a world without modern technology.

“They ask questions, such as, ‘Why didn’t they just leave?’” she explained. “The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has an excellent lesson on why many didn’t leave. They were required to have so many things [such as papers].

“The kids are so used to having technology at their fingertips, they can’t grasp why they couldn’t just go print [the information] out,” she added. “It is difficult to bridge the gap, but I try to set the foundation for their challenging questions.”

Hines loves teaching.

“I like the ‘aha’ moments — like watching children who maybe struggle with a concept and, finally, the lightbulb turns on and they get it. I enjoy watching students help other students make something click. A lot of times they teach me something – especially in an all-inclusive classroom — you never know what you might learn.

“Also, I love the relationships you build over time — many of the kids will swing back by my classroom, stick their head in and say, ‘hi,’” she added.

One of the toughest challenges she sees in the classroom today is balancing hands-on learning with modern technology.

“We are a one-to-one school, which means each student has their own laptop, [and internet],” Hines said. “You don’t want to give them too much screen time – and you also have to factor in AI.

“The challenge is teaching children to have integrity and be proficient 21st-century learners,” she continued. There are some blocked sites, but “you can’t always monitor them, so you have to teach them ethical practices. You deal with all sorts of things. You never know what each day might hold.”

Hines and her husband, Caleb, live in Bear Grass. Caleb is the senior pastor at Rose of Sharon Original Free Will Baptist Church. They have two boys, 6 and 2.

“Having children makes studying about the Holocaust harder,” she explained. “Just the thought of children entering those concentration camps we are going to visit…

“I think I am going to try to focus more on those who resisted. That brings us a little hope,” she continued.

“I’m nervous, but excited. I am nervous to leave my family, but this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for professional development,” she added.

“I am thankful to have this opportunity. I am humbled to have been chosen out of all those applicants,” she said.

Since 2022, the Teachers’ Trip to Poland has been led by Rabbi Fred Guttman, a retired rabbi and Holocaust educator. This summer’s trip will mark the 25th journey he has led to Poland.

Four of those trips were specifically designed for North Carolina teachers. More than 100 teachers from across the state have participated in the program, representing more than 70 of the state’s 100 counties.

The program is fully subsidized through funds raised by Rabbi Guttman from donors, ensuring that selected educators can participate at no cost, according to a press release.

The co-leader of the trip is Lee Holder, a retired social studies teacher from Kinston, who taught for 32 years before retiring in 2020.

Among his many accomplishments is the creation of a Holocaust and Modern Genocides elective course at his high school in 1992. Holder has been a member of the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust since 2003.

Educators in North Carolina are mandated by the state to teach about the Holocaust starting in the sixth grade.

“I think it is really important,” Hines said.

“The Gizella Abramson Holocaust Education Act was passed in 2021 as part of the North Carolina state budget. The act calls the education of the Holocaust essential, defines antisemitism, states as fact the murder of six million Jews, homosexuals, socialists and others, and condemns Holocaust denial. Moreover, it sets a guideline to develop a public classroom curriculum that teaches about the Holocaust,” according to womenoftheshoahjp.com

At the federal level, Congress passed the Never Again Education Act in 2020 with broad bipartisan support, authorizing $10 million over five years administered by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to develop Holocaust education resources and expand professional development programs for teachers nationwide.

Congress reauthorized the program in December 2024, extending federal funding through fiscal year 2030.