COURIER PRESS PUBLISHED IN HISTORIC PRAIRIE DU CHIEN, WISCONSIN • SINCE 1848
LOCAL NEWS
PdC celebrates Homecoming this week Page 3
VOLUME 165 • NO. 73 ❘ PDCCOURIER.COM ❘ MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2018 ❘ ONE DOLLAR
Still on in Gays Mills
Applefest in Gays Mills is happening this weekend, Sept. 2830. Residents from all over the region are encouraged to come out for the 60th annual event and support the small community, which has been ravaged by floods this summer. Numerous vendors and businesses in downtown Gays Mills will be open and celebrating Applefest as usual. The Lions Club arts and crafts, which is typically held in the park, and the carnival, have been moved to the Crawford County Fairgrounds just outside town, due to conditions. The flea market will continue as usual. There will also be a run/walk, food and drinks, music, raffles and much more. The parade happens at 1:30 p.m. Sunday. For updates on Applefest, visit gaysmills.org or find the community on Facebook.
County Health Officer advises to get your flu shot now
Natalie White was one of 30 U.S. Holocaust studies teachers accepted into a 10-day symposium at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, in Israel, this summer. She stayed a few extra days to take in some of the sights as well.
Modern Holocaust Studies course illuminating for Prairie high schoolers
By Correne Martin Understanding the consequences of prejudism, racism and stereotyping with a sense of empathy is a facet of education offered to upperclassmen at Prairie du Chien High School through a rather new, semester-long Holocaust Studies course. The 2018-2019 spring semester will be the third session of this class, which examines the reality and implications of
the Nazi campaign to destroy European Jews from 1933 to 1945. According to a student testimonial from current senior Tyler Smock, through learning about events like the Holocaust, the Cambodian Genocide and the Rwandan Genocide—and other systematic annihilations of the 20th and 21st Century—students can gain perspective about the unimaginable, inhumane behaviors that humans are ca-
pable of executing in the U.S. and other parts of the world. A recent study, conducted by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, reports that two-thirds of American millennials cannot identify what Auschwitz was (WWII Nazi concentration camp) and 49 percent cannot identify a ghetto or concentration camp. The Holocaust Studies class See PRAIRIE HIGH, page 2
Cindy Riniker
By Ted Pennekamp The flu season is almost upon us and people should be thinking about getting vaccinated soon, says Crawford County Health Officer Cindy Riniker, who noted the season officially begins on Oct. 1, but every season varies in length and severity.
The vaccine is available now, said Riniker. The vaccine is a quadravalent that covers four strains of the flu including strains 2A and 2B. She said the vaccine is for anyone 6 months old or older. “Get it now so you’re covered before the flu season starts,” said Riniker. “Get vaccinated. The sooner, the better. Getting the flu shot is the best way to protect yourself, your family and your friends against the flu and slow the spread of the disease.” Riniker said it is best to get what is available. Riniker said the flu virus is always changing, and thus, the vaccine is updated every year. This year’s vaccine is a dead (inactive) virus, so it can’t harm anyone. “The flu vaccine is safe and you cannot get the flu from the vaccine,” she said, in explaining that people who get sick after See FLU SHOT, page 5
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A2 ❘ Courier Press ❘ MONDAY, september 24, 2018 ❘ PDCCOURIER.COM
PRAIRIE HIGH, from page 1 is taught by five-year PdCHS English teacher Natalie White, who, this past summer, attended the Belfer National Conference for Holocaust Educators at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. She was one of 226 teachers nationwide selected to attend the conference, devoted to teaching this history period to millennials and younger generations. She took part with her friend and former PdCHS history teacher Nina Grudt. Furthermore, White was also one of only 30 U.S. teachers accepted into a more intensive symposium in Israel, at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center. Scholarships made both professional development opportunities possible, free of charge, for the teachers and their schools. “The museums offer tons of resources for education and museum educators who helped us by really having everything already created for us to teach in our classrooms,” White said. “At the D.C. conference, I was in the minority, in that we actually have a class here. Many of them just teach units in their social studies courses.” At the U.S. event, attendees heard lectures from professors as well as speakers representing the last generation of Holocaust survivors, which White said was “amazing” and “powerful.” One of the leading resources she uses in her classroom is an “Echoes and Reflections” curriculum developed by the Anti-Defamation League, the USC Shoah Foundation Institute and Yad Vashem. That material was the specified focus of the Israel convention,
mONDAY Today Mostly sunny, high near 75. Calm wind
KicKApoo RiveR Sept 24---------11.27 Sept 23---------11.47 Sept 22---------11.42 Sept 21--------10.83 data from rivergauges.com data from rivergauges.com
Weather information courtesy National Weather Service - La Crosse
River Stages Mississippi RiveR Sept 24---------10.03 Sept 23----------9.9 Sept 22----------9.78 Sept 21----------9.64
Wisconsin RiveR Sept 24----------3.58 Sept 23-----------3.5 Sept 22-----------3.25 Sept 21-----------3.24
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Through both Holocaust studies conferences Prairie du Chien High School English teacher Natalie White attended this summer, she intensively explored lessons about prejudism, racism and stereotyping that she can share with her students.
The class also has had discussions about social media posts and even local citizen comments surrounding topics of prejudism, racism and stereotyping. The class has also heard Holocaust survivors speak in Skokie, Ill., and at Viterbo University in La Crosse. “The proposal for this course was to meet two objectives: to really develop a sense of empathy and create a global perspective that there’s not just mass murder going on in the U.S. but all over the world,” White said. She feels those cultural goals are being met at Prairie du Chien High School. Not to mention, they’re spreading for the greater good, in her opin-
ion. In fact, White attended the Israel Holocaust conference with a teacher from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, of Parkland, Fla., just a few months after the deadliest shooting at a U.S. high school occurred at that teacher’s school. “She wasn’t going to come, but she did, and I was able to share one of my lessons with her,” White said. She added that it’s an incredible feeling knowing such a profound link could be shared with a Parkland survivor. Overall, these results from one course seem to prove it an irrefutable, worldly opportunity for a high school as small as Prairie du Chien.
60th Annual Gays Mills
AS OF SEPTEmBER 24, 2018
becoming SE 5-9 mph in the morning. Tonight A 20 % chance of showers after 4am. Mostly cloudy, low around 59. SE wind 3-5 mph. TUESDAY Tuesday A chance of showers, then showers likely and possibly a thunderstorm after 2 pm. Mostly cloudy, high near 68. SW wind 5-9 mph becoming NW in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation is 60%. Night Showers likely and possibly a thunderstorm before 8 pm, then a slight chance of showers between 8 pm and 2 am. Partly cloudy, low around 46. NW wind 5-9 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. WEDNESDAY Wednesday Mostly sunny, high near 62. W wind 5-11 mph. Night Mostly clear, low around 44. W wind 5-7 mph becoming S after midnight. THURSDAY 30% chance of showers, mainly after 2pm. Partly sunny, high near 62. S wind 8-13 mph. Night A 30 % chance of showers before 8pm. Mostly cloudy, low around 42. W wind 6-10 mph. FRIDAY 20% chance of showers after 2pm. Mostly sunny, high near 61. W wind around 7 mph. Night A 20 % chance of showers before 2am. Mostly cloudy, low around 42. SW wind 5-7 mph becoming S after midnight. SATURDAY 30% chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, high near 60. E wind around 7 mph. Night A 30 % chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, low around 44. NE wind around 6 mph. SUNDAY 40% chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, high near 63. E wind 7-10 mph.
12 am readings http://www. weather.gov/arx/climate#other
second semester only. Study includes the Holocaust, definitions, the pyramid of hate, bias and anti-semitism, sterotype history, Judaism and its beliefs, a summary of WWI and Nazi Germany, the questions of why the Jews didn’t leave, occupations in the ghettos, the gas chambers, and the Final Solution or extermination of the Jews. “This is why we have this class,” White said. “The Holocaust wasn’t just about an overnight mass murder. It was about resistance of all kinds— partisan, cultural, spiritual and armed resistance—and liberation.” She added that the course also makes genocide today a priority. “That’s where it’s eye-opening to the kids, who also don’t know much about Rwanda or Moriori.” Ironically, the class started last fall, just a few weeks after white supremacists rallied in Charlottesville, Va. “All humans need to work together to prevent events like the Holocaust, the Cambodian Genocide, and the Rwandan Genocide from ever happening again,” stated Smock in his final paper. “This class taught me that we not only have the ability to prevent these atrocities from happening, but we must also prevent them from happening to maintain our humane character.” In the Holocaust Studies course, White said one of most staggering moments is when the students read from a list of books and create PowerPoint presentations about them. The list of books consists of titles like “The Translator,” “First They Killed My Father,” “Over a Thousand Hills I Walk With You” and “Looking Like the Enemy.”
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which involved more collaborative group work and sharing of lesson plans the 30 experienced teachers had already tried and tweaked in their own schools. The Holocaust Studies course started at Prairie du Chien High School in the fall of 2017, as a general upperclassmen elective, after White and Grudt saw a need and made a proposal to Principal Andy Banasik. “She and I were casually talking about how our students were really graduating not knowing anything about [the Holocaust],” White affirmed. She said, previously, just a few days in AP U.S. History covered WWII and the Americans perspective of the Holocaust, and the district’s eighth graders read “The Diary of Anne Frank” play for one unit. Moreover, there was nothing in the English curriculum that touched on the subject. Upon making their proposal to Banasik, who was “very supportive” of the notion, a survey was conducted gauging student interest. “They know this number, 6 million victims,” White stated. But, she insists, being from a community like Prairie du Chien, which is much smaller than that number and where there are certainly few Jewish, students have difficulty comprehending that figure. “They want it to be about the stories. I also think their interest was piqued at the idea of horrific things.” During the first year of the course, White and Grudt co-taught it from both the English and history angles, respectively. This year, since Grudt is no longer teaching in Prairie, the class is offered the
APPLE FESTIVAL
Fri., Sat.
&
Sun.
Sept. 28, 29, 30
Huge FLEA MARKET ARTS & CRAFTS Great PARADE FOOD MUSIC & More! Sunday 1:30 pm
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