Ep 621: Education in Motion with Donna Rosenblum and guest Mitch Bickman on hmTv

In this episode of Education in Motion on hmTv, host Donna Rosenblum, Director of Education at the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center, welcomes Mitch Bickman, Director of Social Studies for the Oceanside School District, for a thoughtful conversation about history, empathy, Holocaust education, and the evolving role of social studies in today’s classrooms.

Mitch shares his journey from classroom teacher to district leader and discusses how Oceanside approaches history through critical thinking, multiple perspectives, storytelling, and age-appropriate Holocaust education. Together, Donna and Mitch explore the importance of teaching students not what to think, but how to think, especially in a world shaped by social media, misinformation, headlines, algorithms, and competing narratives.

The conversation also highlights the power of testimony, the need to foster upstanders, and the importance of empathy as a foundation for learning. From Big History to media literacy, this episode reminds us that education is not only about content, but about helping young people become thoughtful, informed, and compassionate human beings.

Transcript

Ep. 621 — Education in Motion

Host: Donna Rosenblum

Guest: Mitch Bickman

hmTv at HMTC

Donna Rosenblum:
Hello everyone, and welcome to our podcast today, Education in Motion. I’m Donna Rosenblum, Director of Education at the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center.

I’m so fortunate today to have Mitch Bickman here. Mitch is the Director of Social Studies in the Oceanside School District, among many other things he does there, but today we are going to focus on his work as Director of Social Studies.

Mitch, welcome, and thank you for being on our podcast today.

Mitch Bickman:
Thank you for having me.

Donna Rosenblum:
No problem. Let’s start by talking about you and your journey. How did you come to Oceanside, and what was your pathway to becoming Director of Social Studies?

Mitch Bickman:
Sure. I received my history education and certification in the state of Michigan. I went to the University of Michigan for undergrad, but I’m originally from New York, so I was always planning to come back.

My first teaching job was actually in the Oceanside School District. I was hired in the fall of 2003 and began teaching social studies in the classroom. I taught pretty much every discipline or subject area within social studies that you can think of.

Donna Rosenblum:
Was that at the high school?

Mitch Bickman:
Yes, I was at the high school level for 12 years. Then I had the opportunity to move into administration. I became the department chair, and a few years later I moved into the director position for K–12 Social Studies.

Donna Rosenblum:
Did you get your administrative degree while you were teaching?

Mitch Bickman:
Yes. I got my administrative degree several years after I started teaching. At the time, I thought I would just keep it in my back pocket. I had no plans to become an administrator. Then things happened, and the next thing I knew, I was in administration.

Donna Rosenblum:
And that’s the way it works. If you didn’t have the degree, you wouldn’t have been able to move up. I did the same thing. I got my degree and didn’t really know what I was going to do with it, but I had it. It is important to have.

From the time you became Director of Social Studies, what are some of the things you changed or implemented with the curriculum? Social studies is always changing.

Mitch Bickman:
It is always changing. The process of historiography changes as our understanding changes and as new information and facts come out over time.

One of the first big initiatives I brought to Oceanside was a program called Big History, which replaced Global Nine, the first half of world history. Big History looks at history from the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago, until today. So if world history, at about 10,000 years, wasn’t expansive enough, we said, “Let’s add a few billion years onto it.”

What I love about the Big History course is that there is an energy and excitement that did not really exist in world history as a standalone course.

The way I describe it is that we teach history through two lenses: the lens of both a parachutist and a truffle hunter. The parachutist is looking at the big picture view of history as they sail back down to Earth. They see all those big processes. Then at times, we want to be the truffle hunter and zoom in to see the finite details of history.

Whenever we explore history, we have to keep going back in time to understand how we got to be exactly where we are. We have to look at everything that ever happened to bring us here, well before human history, including geological forces and more. That is an exciting course for our kids.

Donna Rosenblum:
That’s wonderful. Being a former social studies teacher myself, when you talk about the curriculum, every year another year of history gets added to what you need to teach.

Unlike math, science, or English, where the curriculum is more set, social studies always gets added to. When I think about it now, I have 37 more years of history to teach than when I started teaching in 1986. That is a lot. It is a challenge.

Mitch Bickman:
It is a challenge, but it is an exciting one too.

What I love about history, unlike some other disciplines, is that a lot of science can be replicated in a lab. History is fascinating because it leaves residue in the past. As historians, we have to make sense of that residue, and we give our kids the tools and skill set to do the same. It is an ever-changing discipline, and as you said, it keeps becoming more expansive. It keeps you on your toes.

Donna Rosenblum:
One of the things I love about history is that I do not look at it as names, dates, and places. I look at it as people and events, and really trying to get into the shoes of different people.

One of the things I think has been great over the last 20 years is that we have changed the way we look at different perspectives. History is not just taught one way. There is not a single narrative.

Mitch Bickman:
There are multiple narratives.

Donna Rosenblum:
Exactly. There are multiple narratives of the same story. One does not necessarily cancel out the other, and one is not necessarily more important than another. It is important to hear all the voices in the picture.

I think education has tried to embrace that. Sometimes it can become difficult because some narratives do butt heads, but it is important for kids to be able to think critically. They have to understand all narratives.

Mitch Bickman:
Yes. There is an amazing TED Talk called The Danger of a Single Story. One of the ways we talk about this, and I will give our English department credit for bringing this up years ago, is by asking whether we can provide students with windows, mirrors, and doors.

At times, the curriculum may seem to some students like they do not find their place in it or see how it connects to them. A mirror is where students might see themselves within the curriculum. A window opens up a world of experiences different from their own. A door allows them to step into it and experience it. That is where empathy comes into education.

Donna Rosenblum:
Some of my most successful instructional lessons have been when I can place students in that time and place, where they can feel the event.

That obviously leads into Holocaust education because Holocaust education is really driven by that. I feel so honored to be able to bring testimony to life. That, to me, is the connection students get when they hear from a survivor or now from second-generation speakers.

Students say it all the time: “I can read this in a book. I can watch this in a video. But when I hear from an actual person who lived through it, it changes my whole perspective.”

That is really what we try to do here at HMTC, to provide that service to schools.

Let’s talk about Holocaust education in Oceanside. Maybe start with what happens at the elementary level, then bring us through the middle school and high school.

Mitch Bickman:
Going back to what you said about placing students within the setting or the story, Holocaust education can be told through numbers, but I would not recommend doing it that way. It is so hard to wrap your mind around the enormity of the deaths that occurred during the Holocaust. So it is about storytelling.

In Oceanside, Holocaust education starts in the youngest grades, not with the direct teaching of the Holocaust, but by fostering a culture of belonging and ensuring that no student has to check their identity at the door.

Once we foster a culture of belonging and acceptance, we can begin building the foundation for the teaching of the Holocaust itself.

In terms of the actual Holocaust, we make sure it is age appropriate. In grades five and six, students read several novels. One we are adopting this year is Yellow Star by Jennifer Roy.

HMTC has been a great partner with Oceanside. We bring students to the center so they can see it, and we also bring in testimony from survivors and now from second-generation speakers as well.

By the time students come into eighth grade, we take a much deeper dive into the content itself, looking at the era of the Holocaust and situating it in the larger context of World War II.

Community partners are incredibly important. In addition to HMTC, we partner with the ADL and Facing History. We also have a professional theater company that comes in and performs a play called Voices from the Fire, coupled with testimony that you help us secure each year.

It is such a powerful experience for students to hear from people who either lived it or whose family members lived it, and to understand how it impacted their lives.

Then, by the time students get into 10th grade, we explore genocide as a larger unit, looking at genocides beyond the Holocaust from a world perspective. By the time students become juniors, we look at it more from an American perspective, along with additional programs connected to Holocaust education.

Donna Rosenblum:
It is a great program, and I am so happy that it continues to grow and that we continue to do more, whether it is professional development, works of literature, poetry, or the Kindertransport project we were just discussing.

There are so many things that can be done to help students understand this very complicated history.

You are right about numbers. Numbers almost work against Holocaust education because they seem incomprehensible. Students can dismiss it and think, “That cannot possibly have happened.” So I think focusing more on the narratives, the individuals, and the lived experiences brings it to life.

Mitch Bickman:
It brings it to life. It makes it something they may not be able to relate to directly, but they can understand. They can think about their place in the world and what type of life they want to live.

Part of our Holocaust education is to foster upstanders in the community. That can take many different forms, but I think it is essential to the work we do in Holocaust education and in education about being a good human being.

Donna Rosenblum:
Absolutely. It goes hand in hand.

Sometimes people say, “Why do we do so much Holocaust education?” or “Why do we have to continue teaching the Holocaust?” But Holocaust education is a lens for teaching how to be a better person. It is a vehicle to teach empathy.

If you are not empathetic, that says a lot about you as a person. We want students to understand why we make the choices we do.

At the middle school, survivors and second-generation speakers often ask students at the end to really get it. They will say, “When you wake up in the morning, you have a choice about how you are going to conduct yourself today. What is that choice going to be?”

Just because you are having a bad day, does that give you the right to dismiss somebody?

Mitch Bickman:
This might sound a bit grandiose, but I truly believe empathy should be the foundation of all learning.

When you look at the skills that correlate to the greatest success in life, empathy is always at the top of the list, yet it is also the skill that is taught least often in schools.

So when we think about education across disciplines, we have to ask how we begin to foster empathy. It is essential in the work we do.

Donna Rosenblum:
Why do you think that is? Why do you think empathy is not taught intentionally? What is your golden nugget of information there?

Mitch Bickman:
I do not think it is that empathy is not taught at all. I just do not think it is taught with enough intentionality, and that is where we can do a better job.

Sometimes, especially at the secondary level, we get bogged down with content, timelines, and assessments. Those things should be part of the curriculum, but they should not be the be-all and end-all.

We have to take a step back. Time is often the worst enemy. You have to be intentional about carving out space to foster the skills students will need to be successful in the world.

Donna Rosenblum:
That is true. We are expected to do so much and be so much. When you have to do so much, you compromise what you do well. That is a real struggle in being a successful teacher.

Content drives us, especially in social studies. Sometimes I think, wouldn’t it be great if we could just start at the turn of the century? Wouldn’t it be great if we could just teach from 1900 to 2026?

Mitch Bickman:
There are whole college courses built around that, like post-World War II history only.

Donna Rosenblum:
Exactly. Contemporary education. I always found that you end up rushing through the later decades so quickly.

Mitch Bickman:
I truly believe there has been a shift in the teaching of history over the past decade or so. Teachers and administrators are more aware of that. It is okay if some content is condensed in order to teach the skills, especially the historical thinking skills students really need in the world today.

Content knowledge fades. We do not remember a lot of the content we learned. But skills transcend that. I think there has been more emphasis and intentionality around teaching skills.

When you do that, you are providing students with the opportunity to learn how to think, without ever telling them what to think. That is what they need in their world.

Donna Rosenblum:
You are right, because content they can look up in a second today. We are totally connected.

My husband and I were discussing something last night, and we still have this rule, even though it is just the two of us, that there are no phones at the dining room table. Something came up and he said, “I need to find that answer. Is it okay if I look it up on the phone?” I said, “Okay, honey, you can do it.”

But today, you can find almost any answer in 30 seconds.

So let’s talk about empathy in a social media world. You made the statement that we do not want to tell students what to think. We want to teach them how to think.

I find that very difficult today with social media, particularly TikTok and Instagram, where students see something, like it, share it, and do not always bother to fact-check whether it is true.

How do we counter that? Schools are doing a big job with this, but it is a beast that is very difficult to overcome. What are some of your thoughts?

Mitch Bickman:
I could not agree more. Media literacy is now one of those essential exposure points students need before they graduate, not just from high school, but throughout schooling.

I have mentioned several times the skills kids need. Those include sourcing, perspective-taking, understanding bias, and corroboration.

One of the most important skills students need in today’s social media landscape is lateral reading, along with understanding what sponsored content is.

With lateral reading, as soon as students see something, before they share it or like it, they should go off the site they are looking at and ask: What are others saying about this same thing?

Often, what they find is that something is not verifiable or reliable. If students can pause for just a moment when they see something in their social media feed, that is important.

We also have to talk to them about algorithms and how algorithms are structured to meet their interests and needs.

We want students to pause and ask a series of questions. We take them through a process called claim testing. It is a simple process. We start with intuition. What does your gut tell you about this?

Your gut often tells you something, but you have to go beyond that. Then we take students through several more steps to look at reliability and validity, and ultimately they settle on evidence. What evidence is out there to support this claim?

Those are great skills. If students are pausing to ask questions about what they are consuming, then you are on the right track.

Donna Rosenblum:
They also have to understand that someone’s opinion is not necessarily fact-based or evidence-based. It is their opinion. They have a right to their opinion, but that does not mean their opinion is fact.

Students are bombarded by misinformation, which is a whole other issue. So yes, we want them to question.

Mitch Bickman:
One of my favorite quotes is, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.”

Donna Rosenblum:
Exactly.

Even yesterday, I was reading the paper, and the headline story in Newsday was about the median salary of teachers on Long Island. Not to knock Newsday in any way, because they are the only game in town, and the article itself was not disparaging of teachers or education. But you had to read the article to understand the full meaning.

The headline was a problem for me. I understand that headlines are meant to be sensational and grab you, but so many people do not read the article. Now people may say, “Did you see today’s paper? Teachers earn too much money.”

That is not what the article was saying. It was actually saying that teachers do not earn enough and that the cost-of-living increases are not really meeting today’s needs. But you had to read the article.

Mitch Bickman:
I think you hit the nail on the head. That is the reality of much of the world today, especially for those of us in education. When you are looking to get students to be present, our attention spans are so short. So much of our communication is fleeting and inconsequential.

How do we get students to be present in the moment and actually read the article beyond the headline? Again, that is another skill set that takes time to foster.

Donna Rosenblum:
Part of me gets frustrated because Newsday could have presented it differently and achieved the same goal. If the goal was to show that teachers’ salaries are not out of line and that they are actually being underpaid in today’s world, why not just say that?

Mitch Bickman:
Because it is not exciting. It is not going to draw people to it.

Donna Rosenblum:
My frustration is this: Is news supposed to be exciting? Is news supposed to be entertaining? This article was not an entertainment piece. It was not People Magazine.

Mitch Bickman:
We do an activity with our students that categorizes news stories. We call it “info zones.” Is this meant to entertain you, inform you, document something, or do something else? There are several different categories.

We want students to understand that many news sources are ultimately selling a product. But these categories are not mutually exclusive. A news story can be doing more than one thing at the same time.

There is a great book, I believe from the 1950s or 1960s, called How to Lie with Statistics. You can tell any story you want with numbers. If you carve out a specific data set, you can tell one story, and the same numbers can tell something else depending on how you use them.

Donna Rosenblum:
Statistics are very tricky. Anyone who remembers the commercial saying, “Two out of three dentists surveyed use Trident,” knows it is all relative.

My frustration as an educator is that I feel news outlets like The New York Times, Newsday, The Washington Post, and The Associated Press could do so much better. I feel they have compromised their quest for news and facts.

At the end of the day, we all understand they have to sell newspapers and make money, but they do not have to compromise the essence of journalism.

I mean, would a teacher compromise their instructional value in front of the classroom just to keep their job? We would hope not.

Mitch Bickman:
That is what I find interesting about the world today, both good and bad. There is citizen journalism now too.

Unfortunately, everywhere you go, you have to assume you are being recorded. But sometimes things are being documented in ways they were not previously, which can be a good thing or a bad thing. The question becomes: How do you make sense of all of that?

Donna Rosenblum:
Right. Then you have all these influencers out there putting things out. It is not that they should not comment on issues or politics or what is happening, but what is their ability to do that?

What is their degree? What is their experience? Did they work for the United States government for 30 years and can now talk about White House policy?

Mitch Bickman:
Expertise does not seem to matter as much anymore.

Donna Rosenblum:
That is one of the frustrations many of us have. We want expertise. We want news. We want facts.

I will not comment on something if I do not have the facts. My answer will often be, “I am not comfortable talking about that because I do not have all the answers,” or “I have not read enough about it.”

I was just in Eastern Europe. I took a beautiful cruise down the Danube and realized that, even with my history background, I really do not know much about the Balkan area.

We had lecturers on the cruise who came in and gave us different perspectives. In Croatia, we spent time with a host family. We definitely got exposure, but now I am reading all about that area of the world. I am taking the time to inform myself because I want to be able to talk about it responsibly.

Mitch Bickman:
That is such important advice, not just for people in general, but for new teachers as well. You do not have to know it all. It is okay to say, “I do not know. I am going to look into this further.”

Donna Rosenblum:
Exactly. Here I am at this stage of my life, and I am still educating myself.

Mitch Bickman:
We should always be lifelong learners.

Donna Rosenblum:
We always have to be lifelong learners. That is what I love about travel. It opens our minds to other areas of the world and other perspectives.

Mitch Bickman:
It allows us to go through those new doors.

Donna Rosenblum:
Yes, and that is what I love.

Mitch, I want to thank you so much for being on our podcast today. I am looking forward to another great school year and continuing our collaboration.

Thank you, everyone, for being part of our podcast. Please like, share, and subscribe. Until next time, this is Donna Rosenblum at HMTC on Education in Motion. Thank you.