COLD WAR ICE BROKEN FOR TEACHER SEMINAR HELPS BROADEN PERSPECTIVE.Byline: ALEX DOBUZINSKIS Staff Writer STEVENSON RANCH Stevenson Ranch, California (in the 91381 ZIP Code) is a Los Angeles County, USA, unincorporated community west of Santa Clarita a few miles south of Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement park. The Stevenson Ranch fountain was redone in 2007. -- When she talks to them about the Cold War, teacher Sara Ehrman leads West Ranch ranch, large farm devoted chiefly to raising and breeding cattle, horses, sheep, and goats. The cattle ranch was introduced from Latin America to Texas and the plains of the W United States and Canada. High students through a period they're too young to remember. So it helps to broaden her own perspective, as she did during the last week of July in a seminar at Cambridge University Cambridge University, at Cambridge, England, one of the oldest English-language universities in the world. Originating in the early 12th cent. (legend places its origin even earlier than that of Oxford Univ. in England. ``I lived through the Cold War, and I can communicate facts very well,'' Ehrman said. ``It's more difficult to communicate to my students why everybody was so afraid.'' At the seminar, Ehrman, 54, and more than 20 other American teachers were joined by several Russian counterparts and two Serbians. By talking with each other about the 1962 Cuban missile crisis Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962, major cold war confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. After the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the USSR increased its support of Fidel Castro's Cuban regime, and in the summer of 1962, Nikita Khrushchev secretly decided to , the teachers learned that each side had expected the other to attack. They also swapped stories about everyday life during the Cold War. The seminar participants, who had sponsorships from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, founded in New York by Richard Gilder and Lewis E. Lehrman in 1994, was set up to promote the study and love of American history. , listened to lectures, did role-playing exercises and pored over original source documents from the Cold War. What were Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev's advisers telling him before he decided to send troops to Afghanistan? What was everyday life like in Eastern Europe Eastern Europe The countries of eastern Europe, especially those that were allied with the USSR in the Warsaw Pact, which was established in 1955 and dissolved in 1991. ? How did the Cold War affect the Third World? The teachers delved into those topics and more. ``I think, for the most part, everyone had very specific views about how negative life must have been in Russia, and that wasn't necessarily what (the Russian teachers) were saying,'' said Sasha Rolon, program coordinator. At the same time, Ehrman learned from the Russians that their teaching about the Cold War doesn't gloss over Verb 1. gloss over - treat hurriedly or avoid dealing with properly skate over, skimp over, slur over, smooth over do by, treat, handle - interact in a certain way; "Do right by her"; "Treat him with caution, please"; "Handle the press reporters gently" the former Soviet Union's problems. After coming back from the seminar with an armload of primary-source documents, Ehrman hopes to do better teaching students who often come into her class knowing little about the Cold War period. ``It was a matter of ideology, it was a matter of economics, and it was, especially after World War II, ... a matter of power over the direction that the world was going to take,'' she said. The Lehrman Institute, which sponsors a couple dozen summertime seminars in American history, paid for all the teachers' expenses at Cambridge and for part of their airfare air·fare n. Fare for travel by aircraft. Noun 1. airfare - the fare charged for traveling by airplane fare, transportation - the sum charged for riding in a public conveyance . On Monday, Ehrman traveled from her Sherman Oaks home to West Ranch High to get her class ready for the school year. She expects to share what she learned about the Cold War with students in the spring. alex.dobuzinskis(at)dailynews.com (661) 257-5253 CAPTION(S): photo Photo: (color) After summer studies in England, history teacher Sara Ehrman hangs pictures for her classes at West Ranch High. David Crane/Staff Photographer |
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