Inspired by the issues affecting his students in Chicago, high school English teacher Wesley Davidson authored one of USC Shoah Foundation’s new resources for 100 Days to Inspire Respect.

Davidson, an English teacher at Chicago Tech Academy, authored an IWitness activity called “To Protect and Serve: Community and Policing,” which is the featured resource today, Day 29 of 100 Days to Inspire Respect.

Inspired by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s aggressive plan for his first 100 days in office, USC Shoah Foundation is releasing a new educational resource on IWitness for 100 days beginning January 20. The resources focus on themes of tolerance, human rights and empathy.

Davidson was one of a dozen teachers from across the country who participated in the 2015 IWitness Summer Teaching Fellowship program. During the three-day program, the teachers learned how to build their own IWitness activities and developed their ideas with the help of USC Shoah Foundation education staff. Davidson’s colleague Michelle Clark, a teacher at High Tech High in southern California and already a longtime user of IWitness, encouraged him to apply for the fellowship, he said.

“I was intrigued by looking into to it especially how to expand [using IWitness] beyond the history classroom,” Davidson said. “I really appreciated when I was there looking at how to explore not only historical moments but also these bigger issues.”

During the fellowship, Davidson began developing an activity about upstanders and bystanders. But he switched to the topic of law enforcement and its relationship to community members because it felt uniquely relevant to his students. His school is located just a block away from a police station, and reports about police brutality are often in the local news. His students also tend to be suspicious of police.

“I get a feeling I’m seeing some of these same threads in these historical moments [in the testimonies],” Davidson said.

In the activity, Davidson used testimony clips to illustrate how people in the years leading up to the Holocaust were impacted by the actions of police in their town. The survivors describe what it was like when people who used to just be their neighbors suddenly had control over them, and how the role of police changed. He also incorporated a TED talk about how race affects how people perceive police. Students gather additional testimony clips to construct a video essay.

Davidson hopes his activity teaches students to dig deeper and understand both sides of an issue in order to come to an informed perspective. He also wants them to develop empathy for other people’s experiences, even if they are different.

This is an especially important skill for students to learn in the context of the mission of 100 Days to Inspire Respect – to teach students about the complexities and larger context of issues facing our world today.

“When you look at perceptions of police, xenophobia, hatred…and ask what are the factors involved in that, you realize how complex it is,” he said.