After working as an undergraduate intern at USC Shoah Foundation, Gabby Sharaga is now using testimony in her own classes as a student teacher.

Sharaga interned in external relations and education (where she helped develop the IWitness website) at USC Shoah Foundation after conducting a research project using testimony for Genocide and Terrorism, a political science course at USC.

She will graduate from UC Santa Barbara in June with a master’s in education and a teaching credential to teach secondary history/social sciences. So far, Sharaga has student-taught an eighth grade U.S. History class at La Colina Junior High School and tenth grade World History at San Marcos High School, and is about to begin a full semester takeover of the La Colina class.

Sharaga said that when she taught the Holocaust in the high school class, many of the students knew little about it. However, Holocaust survivor Judy Meisel (whose testimony is in USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive) came and spoke to the class, which made the Holocaust come alive for her students.

“My main goal was for them to realize that such horrific cruelty is still extremely possible, and that they have a responsibility as citizens of the world to not turn a blind eye to hatred and injustice,”Sharaga said.  “I felt that my students made even stronger connections to the content by being able to interact with Judy and came to understand that the Holocaust was just not an event in the far and distant past – it affected real people with real stories.”

Sharaga said she plans to use the Visual History Archive and IWitness when she teaches a Tolerance and Diversity unit this semester. They are important tools for teachers because they allow students to make deeper connections, she said, and allow students to connect emotionally to the content and consider their own personal values instead of just memorizing facts.

“Instead of reading words on a page, students watch history come alive before their eyes,” Sharaga said. "There is no point in studying history unless we are able to learn from it and use this knowledge to inform our decisions and actions.”