Go Back to School with USC Shoah Foundation Educational Resources

View Back to School Resources for Educators

Students may still be enjoying their summer vacation, but the new school year is just around the corner. USC Shoah Foundation has prepared a convenient one-stop-shop of all its educational resources to help educators plan to teach with testimony this year.

At its new Back to School Resources for Educators page, educators will find many options for using testimonies from the Visual History Archive to teach about history, genocide, tolerance and more. On the USC Shoah Foundation website, educators will find a library of testimony clips, which can be arranged by topic, as well as full-length testimonies. Teachers may freely incorporate these clips into their existing lesson plans.

Online exhibits are sets of clips centered on a specific historical event or theme, contextualized with biographical and historical information, maps and photographs. A recent exhibit, Born in the City that Became Auschwitz, was translated into 13 languages.

Teachers can also use USC Shoah Foundation’s online lessons. These are complete lesson guides that include everything a teacher would need to conduct the lesson in his or her classroom. The lessons cover topics such as an introduction to the Rwandan Tutsi Genocide, racism and the law, hate, and more. All lessons include testimony clips.

The Back to School page also includes several commemoration dates that teachers may want to observe in their classrooms, such as the anniversary of Kristallnacht, Nanjing Massacre Memorial Day and Yom HaShoah. In addition, educators are encouraged to explore IWitness and Echoes and Reflections for even more educational materials.