Social studies teacher Molly Gale learned the ins and outs of IWitness at USC Shoah Foundation’s IWitness Summer Institute in Farmington Hills, Mich., this August. But what she appreciated most, she said, was the time she was given to delve deeply into IWitness and work on her own lesson plans before the training was even over.

“Usually [at teacher training workshops] they just throw information at you, but here they presented it and then we had hours to work,” she said. By the end of the three-day workshop, “I had practical lessons written and left ready to roll.”

At Butcher Educational Center’s Middle School for Visual and Performing Arts, Gale teaches US history that is integrated with the school’s arts program. She attended the IWitness Summer Institute with her teaching partner Jen McVicar, who teaches performance arts.

At the three-day IWitness Summer Institute, USC Shoah Foundation staff introduced Detroit-area educators to IWitness and teaching with testimony. Participants learned how to build an activity in IWitness, use the video editing tool, and integrate IWitness into their teaching about genocide, history, tolerance and more.

Gale left the program with three new lesson plans that she will introduce throughout the year.

The first is an activity for her American slavery unit. Students watch testimony clips in IWitness about non-violent Holocaust resistance in order to parallel how people resisted their enslavement without necessarily fighting back.

“Students only think about slaves killing their owners, and it’s hard for them to get past that,” Gale said. “Testimony shows ways that survivors resisted in the camps; it takes resistance to a whole new plane. These were small acts of retaining their identity.”

Next, Gale will incorporate testimony from a survivor and an undocumented immigrant into an activity about immigration. The activity will encourage students to think about how people maintain their identity when it hinges on their immigration status.

Finally, Gale and McVicar will both bring their students to the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills and launch a project based on the center’s Anne Frank Tree. Students will write fictional testimonies from the perspective of the tree, which saw the Revolutionary Era and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Students will perform their testimonies and focus on how testimonies can bring history to life.

So far, her students have been engrossed in watching testimony on IWitness, Gale said.

“They are fascinated by the topic, and any time they got to watch they were riveted by it,” she said.

Gale said she’s found IWitness to be a really useful resource, and feels educators of many subjects could find powerful ways to incorporate testimony into their teaching. Especially with Michigan’s new law mandating genocide education, IWitness is the “perfect way” to teach about genocide.

“Even if you’re not sure how to integrate [genocide education], IWitness gives you a whole toolbox to use,” Gale said.