PERRYSBURG – A Penta Career Center teacher has received national recognition for his study of genocide in Armenia.

David Harms, who has taught social studies, world issues and American government at Penta for 20 years, earlier this year received an Armenian Genocide Education Award.

Harms was among 11 educators honored with the award for their instruction, support and education about the Armenian genocide.

“Holocaust Bearing Witness,” a documentary that was showcased on PBS, had interviewed six Holocaust survivors from Northwest Ohio.

Harms received a Fulbright Scholarship in 2014 and that allowed him to go to Europe to study the Holocaust and travel where these survivors traveled before coming to the United States.

He visited Poland, Hungary and Greece.

“When I got back, I had a lifetime’s worth of experience studying the Holocaust,” Harms said during a presentation to the Penta board in April.

The lesson plan he developed from that trip for his world issues class helped him win this award, Harms said.

When his students come to his class, most have studied the Holocaust at one point. He has them look at world events for the 10 stages that lead to genocide. They build a website and post their findings.

“The Armenian (genocide) sticks out because when we study the classifications, the last one is denial.”

Harms said the hardest thing for his students to understand is that last stage.

“How can people deny the Holocaust happened? We see it all over the place,” he said. “That’s where Armenia comes in.”

During World War I, the Armenians were forced out of their homes, and many were slaughtered, Harms said.

Turkey, which is where the death marches originated in 1915 and 1916, refuses to this day to admit this happened, Harms said.

“The Ottoman Empire was falling apart in World War I. They aligned with the Germans, and the Young Turks in power decided they wanted their land just for themselves,” Harms said.

It was Islamic versus Christians, and the Armenians were Christian, he said.

Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were relocated to the desert which is now part of Syria and Saudi Arabia.

Many orphans were saved by a French ship and most settled in the United States, Harms said.

“It’s just a story that my students can really relate to, when we start talking about saving the kids,” he said.

The term “genocide” didn’t come about until 1944 and was coined by a Polish lawyer.

Harms’ students study bad events, apply the 10 stages learned in class, and decide if the events meet the United Nations’ definition of genocide.

Harms uses the labs at Penta as much as possible. One student poured his project out of concrete, another welded his and still others used techniques learned in construction and culinary.

Students also study the atrocities committed by Pol Pot in Cambodia and Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, plus what happened in Bosnia and Rwanda.

“There are political reasons why you don’t want to call something a genocide because we signed a treaty saying we will go in with troops if we have to,” Harms said.

He said he also has added what was done to Native Americans and the “Trail of Tears” just to prove there are things in our history, too.

Harms wants his students “to critically investigate anything that happens around them. Whether it’s the government that’s doing it or other countries doing it, to be aware that things can go really bad.”

Winning the award was a surprise.

“I was not expecting to win because I am not in the western half of the United States,” Harms said.

He said he was the only award recipient east of the Mississippi River, one of two classroom teachers and the only one who was not Armenian.

Harms had to prerecord a three-minute speech for the Armenian National Committee of America – Western Region, which is the largest nonpartisan Armenian-American grassroots advocacy organization in the Western United States.

The April award ceremony was virtual, but he has been invited to receive it in person next year in San Diego.

“Teaching genocide every year but getting recognized by one of the groups that lived it, is something you don’t see every day,” he said.

Originally from Tiffin, Harms also is a professional musician and does a radio show every two weeks. He writes and sings a new song for every episode.

Tinfoil, his band of 31 years, plays three to four times a month. He also performs solo as Dave Harms Acoustic.

Harms has degrees from Bowling Green State University and Lourdes University and earned his Ph.D. from Walden Universisity.