Discussing World War II with my 9th Grade Honors Students

[Sara Newman]

Last week I was reading the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with my 9th grade honors students, and because the document was written in 1948, we took some time to talk about how World War II and other preceding circumstances inspired the creation of the United Nations and this specific document. When we were talking about World War II, my students seemed to have a decent understanding of the European side, but mentioned nothing about the war in other parts of the world. I shared some of the thins I'd learned about the war from our class, and assigned each student to go home and learn more about the war and be ready to share out their finidngs the next day. Because that class contains many Latino students as well as some Korean and Thai students, I encouraged them to look up how South America, Korea, Japan, and other places also played a role in World War II. The next day, however, (despite my explicit urging), every one of my 28 students shared out about World War II in Europe. They mostly focused on Nazis (as Hollywood tends to do) perhaps because they're the easiest villian to hate, but I was disappointed not to see a greater variety of information found and shared.