Hi everyone,
My name is Ashley Harbel. I am currently in my second year as an Assistant Principal at Timberlane Regional High School, a 9-12, four town school in Plaistow, NH, serving around 1,000 kids. Before that, I was an English teacher for 8 years at Sanborn Regional High School in Kingston, NH and taught middle school English for 8 years in CT. While I love being an AP, I definitely miss the classroom. I get my fix by “guest speaking” in our English and History courses about the Holocaust and still bring a few speakers to our school each year. I also still get to be involved in Holocaust and Genocide Education at the state level and provide teacher PD.
My journey with Holocaust Education really started because I needed to learn more to teach The Diary of Anne Frank, needing context to give my students. This led me to Echoes and Reflections, where I attended an in-person training. Everything since has snowballed from there. After moving to NH from CT, I found a need for Holocaust Education in my school and started a year-long Holocaust and Genocide Studies elective. I also have brought a small group students to Germany and Poland each spring (hopefully we will be doing this again next year since we have not since 2020). Over the course of the last 16 years, I have been lucky to have worked with Echoes and Reflections, participated in the 8th and 10th annual Charlotte and Jacques Wolf Conference in NYC, and spent a week visiting ghettos, deportation sites, concentration, and death camps as part of the first annual Educational Journey through Poland with Yad Vashem. Probably the thing I am most proud of in my professional life is the work I have been doing with the state of New Hampshire. In 2020, I was part of a group that testified and helped mandate Holocaust and Genocide Education in middle and high schools. Since then, I have served on the NH Commission for Holocaust and Genocide Education and am now the Vice-Chair of that group. It has been a fulfilling process to see something go from a bill in front of the house, to helping write the EDU rules, and now bringing that to teachers across the state.
On a non-education note, I currently live in NH with my husband and our fur-child Lizzie (an 12-year-old black lab mix). We have a “summer home” aka RV seasonal site in VT, which is our getaway from everything in our every day worlds and a time to disconnect. We enjoy the outdoors of NH – hiking, mountain biking (I have come a long way in the last several years), and reading on my back porch to the sounds of the brook that runs behind my house. I also enjoy a good brunch, a good show/movie/play, and just hanging out playing board games with my family and friends.
I am excited to FINALLY meet some of you in person that have been a part of my life since 2020 and excited to get to engage with those of you that haven’t.
Erica Kaufman 
Gatsinzi Basaninyenzi 
lthompson 
SueFletcher 
Klaudia Neufeld 
Lori Menning