2008 IRENA SENDLER AWARDS

Springville, New York eighth grade teacher Andrew Beiter has been chosen as the one American teacher to receive the Irena Sendler Award for outstanding Holocaust education.  The award was presented in a school assembly March 27, 2008, highlighting the Kansas students who wrote and appear in the drama Life In A Jar, playing in Buffalo, New York.  The play portrays the work of Polish-Catholic Irena Sendler, recently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for smuggling 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust, hiding their identities on slips of paper buried in a glass jar.  The teacher/director of the students originally set on the task of re-discovering her story after four decades of media obscurity, conferred the $10,000 award in front of Mr. Beiter’s students, past and present, gathered for an hour of interaction with the Life in a Jar cast.  The Irena Sendler Award is given annually to one teacher in Poland and one in the United States whose innovative and inspirational teaching of the Holocaust exemplifies Irena Sendler’s respect for all people regardless of background.  The Polish award was presented on April 30, 2008.

A native of Buffalo, Andrew Beiter attended St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute and earned a B.A. in Political Philosophy at Michigan State University in 1983.  He spent several years as a United States Park Ranger in Yellowstone and Yosemite National Parks before returning to Western New York to receive his teaching certificate from the University of Buffalo and an M.A. in Education from SUNY Fredonia.  He began his teaching career at St.Bonaventure School in West Seneca in 1995, teaching Social Studies, English and Spanish.  He taught 7th and 8th grade Social Studies in Panama, NY, before assuming his present position teaching 8th grade Social Studies at Springville Middle School in 2000.  He and his wife Mary live in Hamburg with their two children, Mitchell (10) and Margaret (6). 

Mr. Beiter has been very active in the Buffalo, New York, Holocaust Resource Center.  His teaching in the Springville Middle School has been an example of presenting the idea of making a difference.  He has held summer institutes dealing with Dafur, Holocaust studies, and other genocides.  His life has been dedicated to 'repairing the world' and he continues to present creative and innovative methods in education.  His students have taken to heart the story of Irena Sendler and Life in a Jar.  Drew Beiter is 'touching the future.'

The Irena Sendler Award is presented by the Life in a Jar Foundation, and funding for the award is through the Goldrich Family Foundation in California, with the assistance of Metuka Benjamin of Stephen S. Wise Temple in Los Angeles.  Life in a a Jar is a non-profit foundation which creates exciting history and social studies projects with teachers around the world.