"Teaching with Testimony in the Twenty-First Century"

USC Shoah Foundation professional development program in Czech Republic

USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education has launched Teaching with Testimony in the Twenty-First Century, a professional development program for educators in Europe this summer. The program centers on the educational use of testimony preserved in the Institute’s Visual History Archive, which contains nearly 52,000 video interviews with Holocaust survivors and other witnesses.

Through intensive, five-day seminars, Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century prepared educators to use testimony in the classroom to build students’ multi-literacies, strengthen their critical thinking skills, and promote responsible participation in society. The inaugural seminar took place in July, at Central European University, in Budapest. In August, the Malach Center for Visual History at the Charles University in Prague hosted a seminar for 12 teachers from across the Czech Republic, followed by a seminar for 17 teachers from Ukraine. A fourth seminar for Polish teachers is scheduled for autumn.

Teachers who attended these seminars learned how to develop their own classroom lessons and activities based on testimony. They will use these resources with students during the school year; next summer, they will present their work at follow-up seminars organized by the Institute. They will also become part of a global network of educators who use digital and visual media to improve anti-discrimination education.

Access to the Visual History Archive in the Czech Republic is made possible by the Malach Center for Visual History at the Institute of Formal and Applied Linguistics at the MFF UK. For more information about the Center, visit www.malach-centrum.cz. For more information about the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, visit sfi.usc.edu.

Česká verze