St. Mary School’s presentation of Holocaust survivor Dr. Eva Olsson last October has won the Evergreen Catholic teachers’ union local some recognition.
The presentation was part of a series of appearances Olsson made at the nine schools in the division, said local president Laurette Nelson, and won the division’s teachers a Local Public Relations Award for special projects at the Alberta Teachers’ Association conference Aug. 8.
Speaking from her experiences as a Holocaust survivor, Olsson discussed the pervasiveness of hate, bullying and how responsible bystanders are when something bad happens.
“She didn’t teach hate,” Nelson said. “She taught how it was important not to hate and how it was important to learn from the experience.”
While she was at St. Mary, Olsson spoke only to the students in grades 3-12, because she felt her talk would not necessarily be appropriate for the younger grades, Nelson said.
The plan had been for her to talk to the junior and senior high students, she said, but things changed and the presentation was opened to the rest of the student body.
Nelson said staff member Stacy Johnson was the project leader in bringing in Olsson. She was the one who discovered Olsson and made all the arrangements to make the presentations a success.
In fact, the presentations were so successful that Nelson had no doubts the Evergreen local would win the award at the ATA conference.
“I went in there thinking we were definitely going to get this award because we had such an amazing speaker,” she said. “It definitely was an honour to receive it.”
She added that it was great the division was able to bring in Olsson because there are not many Holocaust survivors left.
The Local Public Relations Award is designed to help encourage the various ATA chapters around the province to engage in public and community relations, said ATA executive staff officer Jonathan Teghtmeyer.
There are three categories of the award, he said — best overall project, special project and ongoing communications. When the projects are being evaluated, he said the judges look for how well the project was planned, carried out and how effective it was at getting its message across.
In the Evergreen local’s case, Teghtmeyer said the judges were convinced the Olsson presentation was the best.
“The judges were very pleased with Evergreen Catholic’s submission,” he said. “They provided it with outstanding marks and had some great comments for it as well.”
