In the spring of 2009, Behind the Book piloted a program in which the tenth grade at Thurgood Marshall studied the Diary of Anne Frank. Building on the success of the pilot, this spring we presented the cross-curricular program to the 110 students in the school’s four ninth grade classes. In their English class, students studied the diary and, with the coordinated leadership of their English teacher and Behind the Book’s visiting author, also kept journals themselves. They then drew from the journal entries to create personal narratives. In their art class, they used carbon drawing to explore the self portrait as another form of personal expression. At the end of the program, the narratives and self portraits were compiled into a class book.
The visiting author was Catherine McKinley, author of The Book of Sarahs: A Family in Parts. Catherine is an acclaimed memoirist who teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence and is associate director of the publishing certificate program at City College. She grew up bi-racial and adopted; The Book of Sarahs is the story of her search for her Jewish and African American birth families, and the immensely complicated issues she faced along the way. At the writer's visits, Ms.McKinley worked with the students on transforming their journals into personal narratives. Students were fascinated by her story and drew connections between their own lives, the life of Anne Frank and Ms. McKinley's story.
For this project, Behind the Book partnered with the Anne Frank Center USA, a nonprofit organization affiliated with the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, which uses the diary and story of Anne Frank as a way to educate about the consequences of intolerance and inspire the next generation to build a world based on mutual respect. As an extension of their classroom work, the students visited the Anne Frank Center and met a Holocaust survivor.
