A Message from our CEO (transcript)
Looking back at 2023 is amazingly encouraging. I joined the organization in April 2023 after our former CEO, Roger Brooks retired. Roger and the great team here at Facing History & Ourselves made tremendous progress in reaching educators and providing impactful resources for schools and teachers.
During a time when hate and violence are on the rise and demands on teachers are intensifying, Facing History & Ourselves remains a trusted source of support for educators.
"Every teacher who joins our network and every student who graduates from our schools is a call to action, not an ending."
These are the words of our founder, Margot Stern Strom, who passed away last year at the age of 81. In honor of her legacy, we are rededicating ourselves to the pursuit of challenging teachers and students to stand up to bigotry and hate. The same pursuit that galvanized her personal and professional life. I am inspired by Margot's vision for what our world could be if every young person experienced Facing History & Ourselves. We are expanding our work.
Last year, we developed and launched several new programs and resources for teachers, including our new US history curriculum collection, contemporary antisemitism resource collection, and a hate crimes curriculum. We also launched a new school leadership institute that helped 150 school leaders build their capacity to develop and implement equitable classrooms and cultures at their schools.
The feedback about our work is overwhelmingly positive. Teachers laud our deep, thoughtful, empathetic approach to teaching. Many say that our workshops have reinvigorated their why. Notably, several Facing History teachers across the globe have been recognized for their work through Teacher-of-the-Year awards at the local, state, and federal level.
Our work was also celebrated by well-known upstanders including Malala Yousafzai, who visited with students in Los Angeles at a school that integrates Facing History through their classes. And the late Judy Heumann whose adventures as a disability rights champion were featured as part of our All-Community Read.
With over 300,000 engaged educators representing 20,000 different schools in the Facing History & Ourselves network, we have accomplished so much, and yet so much work remains. We are expanding our reach. In the last five years, our educator reach nearly doubled and our brand recognition among teachers grew from one in five teachers knowing who we are, to one in three teachers knowing who we are today. Our new website has amassed over five million visits and still counting. More educators are creating accounts, accessing our lessons and using our tools.
In particular, last year we grew our reach in southern states. In addition to the renewal of our elective courses by the Tennessee Department of Education, we also received approval to teach a Facing History Holocaust elective course in Palm Beach County, Florida, the 10th largest school system in the United States. The second phase of our new communities initiative yielded more than 3,400 new educators from across the South. And we are well on track for our goal of engaging 8,000 new educators by June, 2026.
I am deeply proud of all that has been achieved and I look forward to all that we will accomplish in the years to come. Just one teacher can reach over 100 students. Just think – what if millions of teachers across thousands of schools were utilizing Facing History & Ourselves resources and strategies? Thank you for being part of expanding our network of educators.
