Susan Davenport’s English students at John S. Battle High School in Virginia demonstrated just how deeply they have been affected by testimony from the Visual History Archive when they participated in the Institute’s #BeginsWithMe Giving Tuesday campaign.

Davenport introduced the resources and testimony clips from IWitness and Echoes and Reflections into her classroom after attending the Belfer National Conference for Educators at USHMM. She was looking for meaningful professional development that would help guide her teaching of the Holocaust.

“I think I audibly squealed when I found the online professional development [for Echoes and Reflections] and immediately signed up for it,” Davenport said. “IWitness was included in that online PD and I was so excited to have found such a plethora of resources for my students who are so often visual and kinesthetic learners.”

Once she began her unit on Holocaust literature, Davenport immediately began incorporating resources from IWitness and Echoes and Reflections. She will start the Power of Words IWitness activity next week, and she showed her students one of the testimony videos on antisemitism and had them categorize different types of anti-Semitic propaganda.

She said the activity prompted a good discussion among the students about propaganda and helped them come to the surprising realization that despite the inundation of antisemitic propaganda, the Jewish population of Europe was actually very small.

Students today live in a technology-driven world, Davenport said, which in turn means they are very visual learners and tend to retain things better when they see them rather than just simply reading them.  By using the testimonies the students are given a visual perspective that they wouldn't normally receive if they were just given the book and asked to read it. 

“As a teacher, I try to remember my own struggles when I was in a classroom and apply them to students; I would have loved to have had the opportunity to put real faces with the names and numbers that are printed on a page,” she said. “I have learned just as much watching the testimonies with the students and have often seen and heard my own sentiments about the testimony echoed by students when we watch or do something as a whole group in the classroom.”

Even today, Davenport said she regrets not learning about the Holocaust when she was in school, so she strives to teach her students not just about the history, but the importance of compassion, tolerance and responsibility that can be learned from such a dark chapter in history.

IWitness and Echoes and Reflections can help her students really “see” the events of the Holocaust: the arrival ramp at Auschwitz, or the destruction of Kristallnacht, for example.

Davenport learned about USC Shoah Foundation’s Giving Tuesday social media campaign, #BeginsWithMe, and thought it would be a perfect way to wrap up her Holocaust unit. She posted a photo on Facebook of her students holding up the #BeginsWithMe signs, and their answers showed her just how much they have grown over the course of their Holocaust unit. She has noticed that they are more open, friendly and empathetic toward each other.

“When I saw the answers they wrote down I knew it was one of those moments that I needed to capture; it was one of those moments you live for as a teacher – you actually witness something you taught being put into action,” she said. “I expected generic answers like "remembering," or "learning," but when I saw things like "compassion" "love" and "tolerance" I was moved and extremely proud of them.”