At East High School, Mandated Holocaust Education Becomes a Point of Tension

In 2020, Colorado passed a law mandating Holocaust and genocide education in public high schools. In the years since, students and community members have raised concerns over how the curriculum is being implemented in certain schools, such as East High School, saying political bias in the classroom has created tension and discomfort among some students. 

The situation reflects a broader challenge that certain Colorado schools are facing: how to teach about the history of genocides, including the Holocaust, while remaining neutral on ongoing political conflicts. Because the state gives districts wide discretion over curriculum, classrooms can differ significantly in how they present sensitive topics, leaving some students and parents questioning whether required courses are taught objectively and consistently. 

In 2020, House Bill 20-1336, sponsored by former Colorado House Representative Dafna Michaelson Jenet, passed the Colorado General Assembly and was signed into law by Colorado Governor Jared Polis. The bill mandated Holocaust and Genocide Studies Education as a statewide requirement for public high school graduation. 

“My core goals were that youth in Colorado would be taught the Holocaust with a goal towards respect… and understanding what goes into creating a genocide, which is that it starts with just words, and then leads to concentration camps,” said Michaelson Jenet, who recently resigned from the Colorado State Senate. 

While the House bill mandates that Holocaust and genocide studies must be integrated into graduation requirements, Colorado’s status as a local control state means the legislature has no control over how individual school boards decide how to implement the requirement in various curricula. 

“We couldn’t be as specific as I would have liked to have been.” Michaelson Jenet said, reflecting on the process of passing the bill back in 2020. This led to a wide range of outcomes in how the bill manifested in various school districts.

While the Colorado Department of Education created an 84-page suggested implementation guide for teachers and school districts to follow when creating their curricula, each district has the final say over its own curriculum. 

Some districts, like Cherry Creek, met this requirement through reinforcing their World History curricula, while Denver Public Schools opted for creating a designated class.

At East High School specifically, they decided to dedicate the freshman year history class to educating students about the Holocaust and genocide studies. 

First-semester students take Intro to Ethnic Studies. The 2024-25 syllabus defines ethnic studies as: “The interdisciplinary study of race and ethnicity, as understood through the perspectives of underrepresented marginalized groups in the United States.” 

In the second semester, freshmen take History of Power, Conflict, and Healing. 

The aforementioned class begins by defining the “ten steps to genocide” and applying each to the Holocaust. For the remainder of the class, students examine different genocides and compare and contrast them to the Holocaust. 

For the purposes of this article, an anonymous sophomore at East, who has chosen the pseudonym ‘Sarah’ to protect her identity, took the class last year and took issue with its approach. “My best friend and I had a huge problem with the way that the class was inherently taught, because they teach you about other genocides through the eyes of the Holocaust,” she said. 

What upset students even more was that the Holocaust was compared to what some refer to as the ‘Palestine Genocide,’ which was one of 12 genocides East included in their curriculum for the History of Power, Conflict, and Healing class. 

“A lot of my friends, and a lot of other Jewish students had a huge issue with this because the Holocaust is the Holocaust, and nothing should be compared to the killing of six million Jews,” Sarah said. 

Former Denver Public School Board of Education Member Scott Esserman, being Jewish himself, said that “in particular, making those comparisons [between the Holocaust and ‘Palestinian Genocide’] is problematic.” 

East as a whole decided that the inclusion of the ‘Genocide in Palestine’ was an important detail in its curriculum. “As a collective [the team of seven social studies teachers teaching the class], we’ve [the teachers of the course] all decided to bring the topic [the ‘Palestinian Genocide’] into our classes, since it is inquiry-based,” said Myka Pettit, one of the seven social studies teachers, teaching History of Power, Conflict, and Healing and Ethnic Studies. 

Initially, all seven freshman history teachers teaching the History of Power, Conflict, and Healing class included the ‘Palestinian Genocide’ in their class syllabi. 

Teachers fell on a spectrum of how they taught the History of Power, Conflict, and Healing class. Some more than others let their own opinions and political beliefs enter the classroom, and some placed a greater emphasis on the ‘Palestinian genocide’. “There are a few [teachers] that have been said to bring their own biases into it, even about the Israel-Palestine conflict, but no one is nearly as bad as Ms. Pettit,” said Harry Kossler, a current sophomore who took Pettit’s class last year.

Sarah, on the other hand, was able to persuade her teacher not to teach about the ‘Palestinian genocide’. While originally “receptive…to the idea of not teaching the ‘genocide in Palestine’,” Sarah's teacher felt obligated, as it was the status quo for East’s social studies department, despite her sympathy for what she was experiencing in her class. According to Sarah, her teacher “didn’t know what jurisdiction she had over changing the curriculum, because the genocide in Palestine was explicitly mentioned in the curriculum.” 

Eventually, Sarah’s teacher did remove the ‘Palestinian genocide’ from her class's curriculum. Today, she remains the only teacher out of the seven who has done so.

On the other end of the spectrum of History of Power, Conflict, and Healing teachers is Myka Pettit. Pettit has been teaching at East for three years and started the same year Ethnic Studies and History of Power, Conflict, and Healing were implemented at East. 

Pettit has a reputation among students at East for being vocal about expressing her political opinions in class. And, although facing backlash from many Jewish students, she is, according to Sarah, “very beloved by many.” 

David Abrams, a junior, enrolled in her Ethnic Studies class last year and dropped the class after the first day. He instead managed to take the class online. 

Harry Kossler, a current sophomore, had a similar impression of Pettit. “From day one, I could tell that this [class-ethnic studies] was going to be a problem, and that it wasn’t going to be an unbiased class, and that she was going to have her decisions and her ideals put forth into the class, regardless of what you thought,” he said. 

After that first semester, Harry requested to switch teachers, citing his concerns about Petitt; however, the school cited its policy that forbids students from switching teachers mid-year and did not accommodate his request. 

In her History of Power, Conflict, and Healing class, Pettit assigned a “Positive Propaganda Project,” asking students to create a one-page infographic supporting a positive idea. Most students made posters supporting Palestine, but Kossler submitted one about Israel. ”It was an opinion-based assignment,” he said. 

Pettit refused to accept his poster. “I turned it in, and I believe she said there was a problem with it and didn’t grade it,” Kossler said. This saga would drag on for eight months. 

Despite bringing the issue to then-Vice Principal Camereon Brown and later, Principal Terita Walker, the assignment remained unaccepted for months, affecting Kossler’s grade. 

“[Brown] brought Ms. Pettit into his office, they had a talk, but there was no change, she still didn’t accept the assignment, and nothing was really ever said,” Kossler said. 

When Kossler asked about the assignment during Pettit’s office hours, she told him, “You need to be more open-minded to how the oppressed people [Palestinians] relate to you. You have a lot in common with me and our identity, and I hope that you can do more research and see how these people relate to you more closely than you think.” Pettit said.

She then told Kossler: “I cannot take this assignment, because it shows that you have not done any learning from what has been taught in this class.”

Pettit emphasizes that in her classes, to de-escalate situations that are inherently politically charged because of how recent they are, she tells her students to “stick to the facts.”

“We often refer to sources that focus on those topics [human rights and genocide]. The United Nations is a resource that we are constantly using. We refer a lot to the Holocaust Memorial Museum, a lot of our other human rights organizations, like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Doctors Without Borders.” 

Some observers note that certain human rights organizations listed above may have perspectives that influence how they report on conflicts in the Middle East. For example, between 2015 and 2023, the UN General Assembly adopted more than double the number of resolutions against Israel than all other countries combined. 

Pettit ultimately failed Kossler on that assignment, giving him a 49/100 for it despite being turned in on time. Per East’s equitable grading policy, the lowest score an assignment can earn if turned in is a 50. 

Kossler ended with a B in the class, lowering his GPA. “I would have had an A, and it [that assignment] gave me a B, because she kept it as missing and never did anything about it,” he said. “It’s not just that she teaches it as a biased opinion, but that if you don’t agree with her, there’s a problem, and you’ll get graded differently.” 

Kossler’s poster was discarded, while the others supporting Palestine were hung up outside of Pettit’s classroom. These posters joined a Palestinian flag, watermelon stickers, and red hand stickers. 

“Any kind of retribution or any kind of unfair action towards students who are proud of their Jewish history while taking classes like this is not acceptable,” said Temple Emanuel’s Co-Senior Rabbi Elizabeth Sacks. Sacks has spoken to about five students at East over the past two and a half years about similar experiences to those of Sarah and Kossler. She’s also been in communication with the Anti-Defamation League. 

According to Sarah and Kossler, Petitt was placed on “suspended leave, until she would undergo student inclusivity classes,” after the 2024-2025 school year. “Obviously, that didn’t work because she came right back to school and showed up with a kefiyeh on her waist [on Oct. 7, 2025]... which was insanely disrespectful and rude, and not a coincidence,” Sarah said.  

When asked in an interview to explain the symbolism behind wearing a keffiyeh to school on Oct. 7, Pettit abruptly ended the conversation. I don’t think I feel comfortable participating anymore. So thank you for your time,” she said before leaving the Zoom call. 

These outward displays of political opinion have caused tension among not only Jewish students but also prospective parents and other students at East. 

“It’s very uncomfortable for students like me who have classes across the hall to walk out every day and see that [displays of Pro-Palestinian support],” Sarah said. And this is not only specific to Jewish students; Kossler commented on how he had conservative students in his class who also found Pettit’s abundant political examples uncomfortable. 

Pettit’s supposed actions over the past two and a half years, and the inaction of various deans and the principal, have caused both Kossler and Sarah’s families to contact the Anti-Defamation League. Sarah’s case is currently being investigated. 

“They have said that there are things happening, and that Ms. Pettit is under investigation… There are definitely some legal things happening, and that’s probably all I can say,” Sarah said.