There are a couple of things that really struck me about Sondra’s book.
The first I already talked about in class – the kindness or tenderness in the way the different people in the story are portrayed. There isn’t a sense of judgment as to why they feel or act a certain way, there is only understanding. This led me to think of the differences between anger and outrage. Throughout the text, the students – mostly Margret – were angry about the silence in Austria when it comes to the Holocaust. There was also a part I poignantly remember where they were angry Sondra thought, when she first arrived, that they were all Nazis. I wondered how their anger could be channeled to generate change, how it could be taken to the next step of the process. I think about my students and how they react when we talk about inequalities in terms of race, gender or sexuality, and it is always a process of anger, which paralyzes them, and then outrage, which motivates them. It seems that Sondra’s students were going through those same steps, anger then outrage. Although what goes on in the classroom is a bit different, I looked to Sondra’s reactions to better understand how to react as a facilitator. And what I got was that I had to listen, had to push for criticality but listen to the mood of the students, where I should stop, where I should linger. And I think that was something I really enjoyed about the book, watching an educator really take the students as the starting point.
