Nearly six months after traveling to Poland with USC Shoah Foundation, Soljane Quiles is getting back on a plane and heading to Los Angeles for another program: the first-ever IWitness Teacher Fellowship.

At The Highlander Charter School in Rhode Island, Quiles currently teaches 9th and 10th grade history and has been a featured community panelist and award recipient for her dedication to civics education.

Quiles is one of eight teachers chosen to be IWitness Teaching Fellows this summer at USC Shoah Foundation. Collins and the other fellows will spend three days at the USC Shoah Foundation office working with the Institute’s education staff to learn more about IWitness and develop new activities.

In January, Quiles was also one of 25 teachers from around the world who participated in USC Shoah Foundation and Discovery Education’s Auschwitz: The Past is Present professional development program. The teachers were in Warsaw and Krakow from Jan. 23-28, 2015, where they toured museums and historical sites, learned how to incorporate testimony into their teaching, and attended the official commemoration at Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.

The trip to Poland cemented her belief in the power of testimony in history even more, Quiles said. It was life-altering to be with survivors at authentic sites in Poland, and watching survivor testimony has proven to be very exciting for her students.

“Imagine the awe in my students to look at a picture of children at Auschwitz and then hear from [survivor] Paula Lebovics herself!” Quiles said. “For them to know that their teacher got that first-hand testimony and experience in Poland draws them in and engages them tenfold!”

She was so inspired by the trip to Poland and learning more about testimony that Quiles now wants to lead IWitness presentations of her own. When she attended an educator workshop led by IWitness regional consultant Liz Bommarito, Quiles remembers thinking, “I want to do that!”

As an IWitness Teaching Fellow, Quiles is excited to learn how to do just that. She’s also looking forward to reuniting with some of the teachers she went to Poland with, who are equally dedicated to incorporating technology and testimony into their classrooms.

“I want to collaborate with my colleagues and see how we can take the strand we've been given to create activities that will connect our students – maybe a cross-country e-pal system?” Quiles said. “I'm excited to have a focus on which we can align our ideas and hopefully incorporate our APIP experiences and connections as well.”

It is priceless to be able to bring genocide survivors into classrooms through testimony, she said. Students vividly remember watching survivors speak and share memories and can connect to the humanity of the event.

“History is a living, breathing thing that is constantly happening, never stagnant,” Quiles said. “I'm very happy that IWitness strives to expand daily, through testimonies of other global genocides. It's important to stress that this can and IS still happening.”