By Samuel Asher, Executive Director, Virginia Holocaust Museum
As summer approaches and visitorship softens, our focus shifts to the Alexander Le-benstein Teacher Education Institute (TEI).
For those who may not be familiar, TEI stands for The Alexander Lebenstein Teacher Education Institute.
This program, now in its 20th year, is offered free of charge to teachers in partnership with Longwood University’s Professional Studies Office.
It is designed for middle and high school educators who wish to teach about the Holocaust in their classrooms and they receive continuing education credits for completing our program.
We recently held our first session of the summer from June 24th to 26th, which had a record attendance of 55 teachers.
The second session took place from July 15th to 17th, with almost 30 participating teachers.
This group of educators just finished the second session of TEI (see photo below). The teachers are shown surrounding Holocaust Survivor Peter Feigl, in the center of the photo, who travelled from Maryland to share his riveting story with the group. This wraps up our 20th year of TEI programming!
If you plan to visit us in August, you will notice scaffolding across the front of our building and the second floor is closed to guests.
The scaffolding is in place to allow a team to scrape and repaint our shutters and doors. Additionally, the upstairs area is closed to ensure the safety of patrons while construction crews work to complete our new Holo-graphic theater and add new drywall to the upstairs gallery walls.
As the number of Holocaust Survivors worldwide continues to decrease, we are fortunate to inaugurate this interactive Holographic theater. It will enable the stories and ex-periences of survivors to live on indefinitely.
We hope that once the theater opens, you will be among the first to visit us and experience it firsthand.
For more, visit www.vaholocaust.org
