Brian Hurd has worked with middle school students for 20 years, the last ten as a teacher at Mary of Lourdes Middle School in Little Falls, MN, where he teaches about ancient civilizations, Minnesota History, American History, World Geography, and computers. During this time he has visited Egypt, Greece, Rome, and China (the latter six times, for one-month teaching experiences at middle schools).
Brian travels extensively, and has encountered more than 30 countries on every continent except Antarctica, including all 50 US states. He focuses his adventures on history and the things he teaches.
Brian went with the 2010 American Gathering tour to Israel, Germany, and Poland and attended lectures from some of the top Holocaust scholars in the world. The museum in Isreal has the world’s most extensive collection of survivor accounts, documents, and artifacts. In Germany he visited museums and memorials in Berlin, and the Bergen-Belsen camp. In Poland he visited Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, Belzec, Treblinka, the ghettos in Warsaw and Lodz, Kielce (site of a post-war pogrom), and many other sites and memorials related to the Holocaust. He had instruction at, and visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum before and after the trip.
In addition, Brian has visited Thersienstadt in the Czech Republic and the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Brian has also taken a graduate level course on the Holocaust at St. Cloud State University, and was able to bring a Holocaust survivor in to speak to all of the students at his school about her experiences.
Brian graduated from St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minnesota, with a journalism degree, and has worked as a newspaper reporter, editor, and photographer. He earned his second degree as a non-traditional student and has loved every minute of teaching.
In addition to traveling, Brian reads, writes, gardens, and cooks. He has lived in Central Minnesota his entire life, and now resides there on the Mississippi River with the love of his life, Terry, who is also a teacher . . . and their two cats.
