History Comes to Life on Stage in "Letters to Sala"
On Friday, October 14, 2016, Little Lake Theatre presented Letters to Sala to Sewickley Academy (SA) students in Grades 6 – 9.
The production was designed to bring history and the atrocities of the Holocaust to life. The play takes place in October 1940. Sixteen-year-old Sala Garncarz was living with her large family in Poland close to the German border when her older sister was ordered to report to a Nazi forced labor camp for six weeks. Young Sala volunteered to take her place. This true and victorious survival story of her five years in seven different camps is even more remarkable because she was able to conceal over 350 letters received from family and friends during her imprisonment. Sala's letters, donated to the Dorot Jewish Division of The New York Public Library in 2005, are not only a significant addition to Holocaust research, but have also been called, "the greatest find since Anne Frank's diary." Sala's story is one of beauty, courage, and impact.
Middle School English teacher Ms. Deborah Golden and history teacher Ms. Kate Lukaszewicz are excited to bring this production to the Academy, as the story is connected to the work of students in all three Middle School grades. This story will be one to inspire and challenge our students. Ms. Lukaszewicz created a learning experience that enabled students to construct a narrative of Sala's experience based on a variety of primary source documents (PSD’s): images, maps, videos, oral histories, and headlines. The general idea of this learning experience was to give students the opportunity to examine the PSD’s and capture their ideas about what Sala was experiencing.
At the end of Letters to Sala, students participated in a Q&A session with the director and cast members.
Ms. Golden and Ms. Lukaszewicz were able to bring this production to the Academy thanks to the generous support of the Home and School Association’s Grants for Innovative Frameworks in Teaching (G.I.F.T.).
The G.I.F.T program allows Sewickley Academy teachers to be able to apply for funding to help support projects or teaching strategies that go beyond the original conceptual framework of their courses. This initiative was developed collaboratively with the Home and School Association and SA teachers and administrators to provide teachers with a mechanism, which will allow them to capture unexpected opportunities for innovative, interdisciplinary projects, especially where collaboration and experiential learning are the focus and student learning goes above and beyond daily classroom practice and experience.
