Summer 2008 Issue

 

Alumni Spotlight: Nick Coddington

“The best thing to do is to teach kids to have compassion—have understanding—so they can solve problems.”

Nick Coddington

By Amy Spies Karhliker

“Our job as teachers is to prepare students for the situation that will come, not what’s happening today or the next day,” said Nick Coddington, a teacher leadership graduate of the University of Illinois at Springfield’s award-winning online program. “Do they have the courage to do what is right? What do they do when they see someone who is being teased? When they get older, how do they vote?”

Coddington is a high school world history teacher at Wright Academy in Tacoma, Wash. He teaches world history through the lens of genocide, which allows him some unique teaching opportunities. He uses the Holocaust as well as the genocides in Armenia, Russia, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur to demonstrate his points. As part of his curriculum, he brings in powerful speakers, people who have survived genocides and people who have risked their lives to rescue victims. By bringing these speakers in, his students are able to put real, live faces—ones not so different from their own—together with the historic and political events of genocide.

Coddington teaches because he “wanted to give students a bigger perspective,” he said. “The best thing to do is to teach kids to have compassion, have understanding, so they can solves problems,” he continued. “The first step to fixing problems is caring. If you care, you’re more likely to fix it.”

Coddington began his professional life in the Army. After he graduated from West Point as an engineer, he spent five years as a tank commander on the West/East German border, guarding the West against Communism. While in the Army, he earned two master’s degrees: a master of science in engineering management from St. Martin’s University in Lacey, Wash.; and a master of science in strategic intelligence from the National Defense Intelligence College with post-graduate studies in conflict resolution from the University of Brussels.

For the next 14 years, Coddington worked in Army intelligence, mostly in NATO units. His work in intelligence involved humanitarian response, disaster relief and deployments to Third World countries to try to make bad situations better. He helped identify areas that might be susceptible to genocide, given certain situations or conditions; he went to Iraq on rebuilding missions to rebuild schools and set up classes in an attempt to create environments so people could live better lives. From his assignment desk in Belgium, he assisted in evacuating Americans and other Westerners from Rwanda.

“Truly, we could have stopped that genocide at about day eight or nine,” Coddington said. “We had the airport taken.”

“But we didn’t do that,” he said.

After Rwandan President Habyarimana’s jet was bombed out of the sky on April 6, 1994, the Rwandan Armed Forces and Hutu militia went from house to house, killing Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Thousands of people were killed in a matter of hours; the airport was taken almost immediately.

“It’s important to realize,” he explained, “that with any people, there’s an extreme possibility of doing bad things. There’s also an extreme possibility of doing good things. In every bad situation [the U.S. has] been in, I’ve seen unbelievably heroic people do wonderful things and save people.”

The question as to “why” we, that is, the United States, didn’t stop the slaughter in Rwanda is important. But perhaps more important have been the opportunities for standing up for what’s right, for advocacy, for compassion. Thus, Coddington teaches the Rwandan genocide as a tough lesson in international politics and national interests. He teaches the students about the genocide and the events and history leading up to it, and everyone can see that something needed to be done. And then he shows them President Clinton’s speech, and the students are shocked and saddened that, in fact, nothing was done.

Coddington further brings the Rwandan example to life by bringing Carl Wilkins to speak to the class. Wilkins was a missionary from the Adventist Development and Relief Agency International and the only American to stay in Rwanda during the 100-day genocide in which 800,000 Tutsi and perceived Tutsi sympathizers were slaughtered. Wilkins could have evacuated along with every other Westerner. But he didn’t. He stayed and ultimately rescued thousands of innocent children’s lives by working with the prime minister, a man who organized much of the genocide.

Wilkins faced the rebel militia often and didn’t ever know if he would make it through any check point or “inspection.”

“Carl Wilkins shows in specific ways how one person can change lives,” said Coddington. “Carl Wilkins saved thousands and thousands of lives because he refused to be a bystander.”

For Coddington, refusing to be a bystander is a significant ideal to strive for in our culture of isolation and media bombardment. He recognizes that people are exhausted and fearful, “but,” he said, “don’t go home and push the button on the garage door. If we can make the world a better place for our neighbors, it’s going to be a better place for us.”

“Refusing to be a bystander is as simple as saying ‘I’m not going to…’. Fifteen years ago, most of the chocolate we ate was from the slave labor of Rwanda or Congo. Like Fair Trade coffee—if you go to Starbucks and only buy Fair Trade, pretty soon that’s all they’re going to sell. You don’t have to make a difference by putting yourself in harm’s way. You can decide, ‘I’m not going to buy that shirt made with slave or child labor.’”

Nick Coddington with students

Coddington has also brought Holocaust survivors to talk to his class. And, he has developed his curriculum to include an immersion experience: He takes his students to Poland every year to visit Auschwitz, to stay with host families and to see, firsthand, the impacts of the Holocaust.

At the beginning of the class, he has his students look at photos of Holocaust victims’ families doing similar things that their own families would do: swimming at the beach, playing at the park and sitting together at family gatherings, to build the idea that we are not so different. He then has them research the families and find out what happened to them.

The trip to Poland is the culmination of the year’s work. They make new, life-long friends with people who live much differently than Americans do. The students realize how much “stuff” we have in this culture and they realize that maybe we don’t need all of that. They see that people elsewhere in the world live on much less and are still happy.

“[The trip] took them half way across the world and they figured out the kids from Poland were just like them,” he said. “The kids from Poland, France, Italy, Germany—just like them, the same aspirations, same goals. But they didn’t know that before they got there. … People are all basically the same, even though you might not be able to talk someone, they might eat different things, we’re all connected in humanity.”

“When people look back on their lives,” he continued, “they realize the best times had to do with relationships and interacting with people, not things or money. Relationships are different—that’s what we’re trying to create, is relationships, both close and far away, give kids the opportunity to overcome that fear.”

The first group of Coddington’s immersion group returned to the States with a new mission: To bring their new Polish friends to this country to learn about America and Americans. The students raised $11,000 to pay for the Polish students’ transportation and expenses. Now, the exchange between the two countries is ongoing.

As a result of his genocide curriculum, Coddington has won two awards. In 2007, he was recognized as the nation’s top Holocaust educator and received the Robert I. Goldman Award from the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous. That organization financially supports the people who risked their own and their families’ lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

In 2008, Coddington also won the Spirit of Anne Frank Award from the Anne Frank House USA, which “recognizes educators ‘who have demonstrated outstanding commitment to combat discrimination, racism, and bias-related violence through involvement in programs offering conflict resolution, Holocaust education, violence prevention, and peer education models to engender understanding among diverse groups and promote social justice.’”

Coddington credits the University of Illinois at Springfield’s online teacher leadership program with his success as a teacher by teaching him “how to be assertive and handle myself in the classroom,” he said.

Coddington looked at the programs offered by Pepperdine, the University of Washington and Florida State. But he chose UIS because of the breadth of courses and diversity of the classroom. UIS’ online program forced him to write well. It forced him to put into words exactly what he was thinking. “Because you’re not seeing faces, you have to make sure that what you write is exactly what you think,” he said.
A benefit of an online education is that stories told in the classroom can be re-visited. In a traditional classroom setting, stories are told and then the story is gone. “I missed having a cup of coffee with the people in class,” he said. “But there’s a different side you get that you wouldn’t otherwise have gotten. And for working professionals, I was grateful for the flexibility.”

Sharon McCurdy-Smith, associate director of UIS’ Office of Technology-Enhanced Learning, points out that Coddington’s military experience brought “great perspective” to the online classroom community. “His military experience as a training officer brought new perspectives and ideas to our classroom which strengthen the quality of the interaction and learning. Through our online discussion boards, Nick was able to share his military experience with his peers and, I believe, was able to see how his military experience had similar parallels in the civilian world.”

“People do things out of habit, especially when they’re in a bad situation. Good things, doing right things, are a habit. If we get students to do this now, they’ll be able to stand up. We can make a difference in one life.”