Dear John,

As a mother to two young children, I frequently turn to parenting groups online for answers. When do we need to turn the car seat around? Where can I take the kids to pick strawberries? What's the right way to peel a banana for a toddler? (Answer: definitely not the way I just did it.)

But recently in my town’s online parenting community, there have been parents asking much tougher questions. They want to know what to do when their kids face antisemitism at school, from hate speech on bathroom walls to swastikas on desks and other incidents. Parents, teachers and administrators are struggling to address antisemitic incidents which are up 49% in K-12 schools nationwide in 2022.

As ADL’s VP of Education, I’m incredibly proud of the work our team does across the country to address antisemitism and other forms of bias in our schools. In 2022 we reached five and a half million students through our programming. I want to share two of our initiatives with you.

Today (May 11th), we’ll be having our No Place for Hate Day celebration where we acknowledge the hard work of over 1.9 million students and 186,000 educators who participated in this year’s No Place for Hate program. For over 20 years, this student-led initiative has helped create more equitable and inclusive classrooms and schools around the country. This year’s theme is “Proud to Be an Ally.” I will be supporting this wonderful work along with my ADL colleagues by sharing our stories of allyship using the hashtag #NoPlaceforHate. Feel free to post your own story or follow the hashtag and share the stories that inspire you most.

We also have five brand-new digital student activities in our “Explore the Past, Shape the Future” Holocaust Education series, free through ADL’s Echoes & Reflections Holocaust Education program, which is a partnership with the USC Shoah Foundation and Yad Vashem. These dynamic activities for middle and high schoolers combine the power of survivor testimony with inquiry-based learning to encourage critical thinking, reflection and understanding of the Holocaust and battling contemporary antisemitism. Our recent Learn to Never Forget campaign, which included these activities, helped us reach over 12,500 educators and students in just four short weeks.

I joined ADL to help ensure that our young people can grow up in a world without hate. I’m proud of all that ADL Education has accomplished and especially, all of the incredible work on the ground that teachers and students are doing to make tomorrow better. As one of our middle-school participants from Omaha reflected, “The smaller things matter, and allies include people you'd never expect.”

Please join me today in recognizing No Place for Hate Day as we celebrate our schools and being allies in Fighting Hate for Good.

Sincerely,

Clara Hess

VP, Education

ADL