Connie Shapiro

For more than 30 years, Facing History and itself has believed that education is the key to combating bigotry and nurturing democracy. The firm works with educators throughout their careers to improve their effectiveness in the classroom, as well as their students' academic performance and civic learning. Through a rigorous investigation of the events that led to the Holocaust, as well as other recent examples of genocide and mass violence, students in a Facing History class learn to combat prejudice with compassion, indifference with participation, and myth and misinformation with knowledge. Facing History's impact in supporting teachers' effectiveness and promoting students' academic development and civic learning has been demonstrated in more than one hundred studies by independent researchers and Facing History evaluators. Since it was founded in 1976 in Brookline, Massachusetts, Facing History and itself has grown from an innovative course taught in a single school district to an international organization with more than 150 staff members in Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, London, Los Angeles, Memphis, New England, New York, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Toronto, and partnerships in Northern Ireland, Israel, Rwanda, China and South Africa. These offices and partnerships, as well as projects throughout North America and around the world, support a network of more than 29,000 trained educators who reach nearly two million young people annually.