A teacher from Bear Grass Charter School has been selected from over 360 applicants to attend the 2026 Teachers\u2019 Trip to Poland.<\/p>\n
The program will bring together 40 North Carolina educators who teach about the Holocaust, to an intensive eight-day educational seminar in Poland.<\/p>\n
Seventh-grade English language arts teacher Hollie Coltrain Hines will leave for Poland July 19 and return July 27.<\/p>\n
Hines, who received her master\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
She has visited the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum several times.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like I\u2019ve always been drawn to that time period,\u201d Hines explained.<\/p>\n
At Bear Grass, she teaches a three-week unit on the Holocaust each year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe complete a novel study on \u201cFour Perfect Pebbles\u201d by Marion Blumenthal Lazan,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Her upcoming trip to Poland will deepen her comprehension and compassion as she walks through areas some of the Holocaust\u2019s most brutal events took place.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis trip is about the Holocaust and genocide studies,\u201d she said, acknowledging the emotional weightiness. \u201cWe 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are going to study prewar Jewish life, which will help us see individuals and not just numbers,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n
She continued, \u201cWe are also going to study \u2018acts of resistance,\u2019 which I think resonates with kids more \u2014 especially since they seem to know all about resisting things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hines said that resistance education is important.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is important to see how certain individuals resisted Nazi ideology \u2014 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\u2019ve done my job \u2013 especially with antisemitism on the rise again,\u201d she continued.<\/p>\n
The subject is never easy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I introduce the unit, the kids usually have some really tough questions. There are ideas that are really hard for them to grasp,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s seventh graders have a hard time visualizing a world without modern technology.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey ask questions, such as, \u2018Why didn\u2019t they just leave?\u2019\u201d she explained. \u201cThe U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has an excellent lesson on why many didn\u2019t leave. They were required to have so many things [such as papers].<\/p>\n
\u201cThe kids are so used to having technology at their fingertips, they can\u2019t grasp why they couldn\u2019t just go print [the information] out,\u201d she added. \u201cIt is difficult to bridge the gap, but I try to set the foundation for their challenging questions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hines loves teaching.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like the \u2018aha\u2019 moments \u2014 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 \u2013 especially in an all-inclusive classroom \u2014 you never know what you might learn.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlso, I love the relationships you build over time \u2014 many of the kids will swing back by my classroom, stick their head in and say, \u2018hi,\u2019\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
One of the toughest challenges she sees in the classroom today is balancing hands-on learning with modern technology.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are a one-to-one school, which means each student has their own laptop, [and internet],\u201d Hines said. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to give them too much screen time \u2013 and you also have to factor in AI.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe challenge is teaching children to have integrity and be proficient 21st-century learners,\u201d she continued. There are some blocked sites, but \u201cyou can\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving children makes studying about the Holocaust harder,\u201d she explained. \u201cJust the thought of children entering those concentration camps we are going to visit\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I am going to try to focus more on those who resisted. That brings us a little hope,\u201d she continued.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m nervous, but excited. I am nervous to leave my family, but this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for professional development,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am thankful to have this opportunity. I am humbled to have been chosen out of all those applicants,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Since 2022, the Teachers\u2019 Trip to Poland has been led by Rabbi Fred Guttman, a retired rabbi and Holocaust educator. This summer\u2019s trip will mark the 25th journey he has led to Poland.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 100 counties.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Educators in North Carolina are mandated by the state to teach about the Holocaust starting in the sixth grade.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it is really important,\u201d Hines said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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,\u201d according to womenoftheshoahjp.com<\/a><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Congress reauthorized the program in December 2024, extending federal funding through fiscal year 2030.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A teacher from Bear Grass Charter School has been selected from over 360 applicants to attend the 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1855,10930,264,1526,9,10928,843,1322,10929],"class_list":["post-16365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-poland","tag-child","tag-classroom","tag-education","tag-jews","tag-poland","tag-teacher","tag-technology","tag-the-holocaust","tag-united-states-holocaust-memorial-museum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}