When Rob Hadley joined 10 other teachers for the IWitness Teaching Fellowship in July, it was far from his first time creating testimony-based lessons and activities.

Hadley has been involved with USC Shoah Foundation since 2010, when he participated in the Institute’s Master Teacher Program at the suggestion of fellow USHMM Regional Educator Sheila Hansen. Hadley was interested in creating a collection of Oregon Holocaust survivor testimony clips (he is a history teacher at Clackamas High School in Oregon). Working with fellow Oregon Master Teacher Ginny Hoke, Hadley helped construct four local survivor activities for the Oregon Holocaust Resource Center.

For Hadley, the Master Teacher program affirmed that testimony has the power to impact students just as strongly as survivor classroom visits.

“I was amazed after listening to just dozens of testimonies that in many ways the power of testimony could in fact surpass the traditional survivor visit to my classroom,” Hadley said. “The key would be how I as the teacher would incorporate it effectively and meaningfully into class.”

He began to incorporate Holocaust and Rwandan Tutsi Genocide testimony throughout his curriculum, so that by the time he got to his Holocaust unit, his students were already comfortable watching testimony.

Hadley then collaborated with another Master Teacher, Kelly Watson, on a series of lessons and IWitness activities, this time focused on the Institute’s new Rwanda Tutsi Genocide collection. The two were inspired after getting to meet a Tutsi survivor during the Master Teacher program.

“Spending the next year watching Freddy Mutanguha, Kizito Kalima and Carl Wilkins (rescuer) testimony was incredibly moving and both Kelly and I felt an immense honor and responsibility to share their stories with teachers,” Hadley said.

Hadley and Watson constructed the USC Shoah Foundation lesson If You Survive, Be a Man, followed by the Kizito Kalima Information Quest and an in-development Freddy Mutanguha Information Quest.

The IWitness Teaching Fellowship offered Hadley a new opportunity to work with teachers who are just as passionate as he is about the possibilities of teaching with testimony. He was also impressed by how much IWitness has improved and become even more user-friendly for educators over the years.

“My goal with IWitness is to get more teachers to feel comfortable using testimony in the classroom,” Hadley said. “I enjoy training others to see the power that teachers now have in using the testimonies in their curriculum.”