Sally Ingram was first introduced to USC Shoah Foundation years ago, when her mother-in-law, Marione Ingram, gave her testimony to the Visual History Archive about her life in hiding during the war. Now, Ingram is using testimony and the IWitness Video Challenge to inspire her middle school students to deeply engage with survivors’ stories.

Ingram began using IWitness in her eighth grade language arts classes at Saint Bernadette School in Maryland after participating in the ADL Bearing Witness professional development program for Catholic school educators. She thought the testimony clips in IWitness were “middle school friendly” because of the way they were indexed and searchable, and felt shorter clips would have a maximum impact on her students. She could introduce them, build background and put them into historical context for the class.

Ingram uses IWitness as part of her Holocaust unit, which includes material from Echoes and Reflections, Facing History and Ourselves, The Diary of Anne Frank and The Devil’s Arithmetic. The unit culminates in a class trip to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and a survivor visit at her school.

Ingram said it is “powerful and life-affirming” for students to learn how survivors built new lives in different lands after the war. She also appreciates being able to introduce them to a variety of survivor backgrounds and experiences via IWitness’s short clips, so that she can address any preconceived notions or assumptions students may have about what happened during the Holocaust.

“From my first exposure to a testimony – Kurt Messerschmidt – I knew I wanted to use these precious personal stories in my classroom. Their immediacy and power cannot be ignored,” Ingram said. “They have changed how my students see the world.”

The IWitness Video Challenge is also valuable for the way in which it compels students to interact with testimony and build their technological skills, Ingram said. Most importantly, though, it provides inspiration – encouraging students to be inspired by the words of survivors and to respond to their classmates’ projects.

“The IWitness Video Challenge creates such an influential, multi-faceted experience that the students will remember for years to come,” Ingram said.

Ingram added that IWitness uses students’ natural strengths to create something beautiful.

“They will respond powerfully to testimony and to each others’ words. They will build community both inside and outside the classroom,” she said.