Peter Tillen was so inspired by his high school Holocaust and Genocide Studies elective course last year that he wanted to make sure his whole community celebrated the teacher responsible.

Peter nominated his teacher Jennifer Goss for the Dawbarn Education Award, awarded every year to 10 local teachers by the Community Foundation of Central Blue Ridge in Virginia. Last week, Goss was announced as one of the winners of the 2016 awards, which comes with a $10,000 prize. 

The Dawbarn Education Awards honor those individuals who have most successfully encouraged students to reach their full potential, inspired young people to set educational goals, and fostered a lifelong appreciation of learning in local youth.

Along with her responsibilities as social studies teacher at Robert E. Lee High School, Goss is a facilitator of Echoes and Reflections’ professional development courses both in person and online. These courses teach educators everything they need to know about incorporating the primary sources, video testimony and lesson guides of Echoes and Reflections, a partnership between USC Shoah Foundation, ADL and Yad Vashem.

Many teachers cite Goss as the first person who told them about Echoes and Reflections and encouraged them to sign up for a professional development course.

Goss has also written four IWitness activities for USC Shoah Foundation: New Beginnings: Journey to America, Information Quest: Kristallnacht, Einsatzgruppen: The Firing Squads of the Holocaust and Righteous Among the Nations. She also wrote a blog for USC Shoah Foundation, “Five Resources to Teach Kristallnacht with Testimony.”

Peter said Goss’s Holocaust and Genocide Studies course sparked in him a new interest in current events and a desire to learn more about world cultures, especially those that have been affected by genocide. He especially enjoyed the class trip to United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, D.C., getting to meet a Holocaust survivor and Rwandan Genocide aid provider Carl Wilkens, and all the films and videos shown in class.

“I decided to nominate my teacher Mrs. Goss for the Dawbarn award because I learned more in her classes than any others I've ever taken, because she not only taught me the importance of doing my homework and studying, but also changed the way I saw the world around me,” Peter said. “Her Holocaust and Genocide studies class was the most interesting and breathtaking class I've ever taken, and sparked many of the interests I still have today.”

Goss said she is astounded that one year after Peter told her he planned to nominate her for the Dawbarn award, she is now being honored as one of the winners.

“There are so many deserving teachers in our community and I am beyond lucky to be considered not only by the awards committee but also of a student such as Peter to be honored in this fashion,” Goss said.

Studying the Holocaust and other genocides has the potential to inspire students to be active citizens of democracy and do their part, whether big or small, to make the world better, Goss said.

“I think that even though these are dark events in history, studying them gives students the opportunity to see that their choices matter - whether those choices are civic in nature or just in daily interactions with other human beings,” Goss said. “Not every student will leave my classroom on the path to travel to a war-torn country to offer aid but I do hope that they will leave as changed individuals who work each day to make the world and their corner of it a better place.”

Goss hopes that her teaching, specifically about the Holocaust and genocide, provides her students practical skills such as critical thinking that will serve them well regardless of the profession or path in life that they choose to pursue.

“I hope that they will take away the knowledge that their voice matters and also the skills and abilities to make better decisions in their lives and the lives of others,” she said. “I also want them to remember the people they have met, in person and through visual history testimony and to allow the impact of those individuals to permeate their lives for years to come.”