“Teaching and Learning About the Holocaust” Educator Seminar in North Carolina June 4

Rob Hadley, USC Shoah Foundation education consultant in the U.S., will lead an introductory IWitness workshop at the one-day seminar “Teaching and Learning About the Holocaust” Saturday, June 4, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

The seminar is a joint effort from USC Shoah Foundation and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) for teachers in North Carolina. It will be held at Mount Tabor High School from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Hadley will lead the seminar with Laurie Schaefer, USHMM Museum Teacher Fellow and Regional Education Corps Member. Schaefer also participated in USC Shoah Foundation and Discovery Education’s “Auschwitz: The Past is Present” professional development program in Poland in January 2015.

The seminar will begin with a personal testimony by Holocaust survivor Margot Lobree. Margot will share her experience surviving Kristallnacht, going to England on the Kindertransport and her journey to the United States.

Shaefer will present pedagogical approaches to teaching the Holocaust using guidelines and exhibits from USHMM. She will also present on the history of Hollywood’s portrayal of the Holocaust on film and share strategies for using some of these films in the classroom.

Hadley, who is also a USHMM Museum Teacher Fellow and Regional Education Corps Member, will lead the educators in a hands-on workshop on IWitness. Participants will learn how to use testimony in the classroom, including different strategies for integrating technology in the classroom, and how to use modules already included for student use as well as the video editing software embedded in the program.

During his presentation, Hadley will introduce North Carolina teacher Keith Stringfellow, who will share his experiences using testimony in his classroom at Charlotte Islamic Academy. Stringfellow participated in the “Auschwitz: The Past is Present” program last year with Schaefer, and his students recently completed an IWitness activity concurrently with a class in Kigali, Rwanda. The two classes video chatted with each other to share their thoughts on what they learned.

As an education consultant for USC Shoah Foundation, Hadley travels across the U.S. leading trainings and professional development for educators about IWitness and teaching with testimony.