December 19, 2016 @ 4:00 pm - December 19, 2016 @ 5:00 pm
USC Shoah Foundation's free educational website IWitness will host a Social Studies Twitter Chat #SSChat on Monday, Dec. 19, 2016 at 4pm PT/7pm ET. Join @USCIWitness for a discussion on Teaching with Testimony: Enhancing Empathy and Critical Thinking Skills.
As educators, we are asked to help our students effectively process the outcome of our elections and the implications it may have in their communities. In doing so, we need to find ways to provide them a safe and supportive place to understand their changing roles.
#BeginsWithMe - Teaching about the consequences of Political Rhetoric
Several months ago in my former senior high school class, students were introduced to the ideas of illiberalism. When discussing this issue, students are faced with how governments will apply laws and acts during times of crisis, as well as everyday life, that would limit or suspend civil liberties of any individual or group.
Back to School With IWitness: How to Download Student’s Work from IWitness
Students and teachers can now download their video projects constructed in IWitness using the WeVideo editor and their word clouds built in the Information Quest activities. So here are three easy steps for students and teachers to download their work from IWitness!
Responsibility and Truthfulness are not Privileges but Duties
Poland’s new right-wing government wants to change the way children in that country learn about the Holocaust, casting Poles as only victims or heroes. In this new narration, the Polish people were always helping the weak, were good neighbors and cared about minorities.
2016 IWitness Video Challenge award goes to eighth-grade poetry club creators
A trio of eighth-graders from New Jersey who created a poetry group that has enabled students at their school to express their hardships and appreciation for one another has won the 2016 IWitness Video Challenge sponsored by USC Shoah Foundation.
A few weeks ago, a student I was interviewing for a profile I was writing on him for USC Shoah Foundation’s website said something interesting: “Growing up Jewish, the Holocaust is pretty much always there.”
I could identify. As someone who went to Hebrew school twice a week, every week, from the age of 5 to 13, the Holocaust was something I was always aware of. I was taught about it frequently, both in religious and regular school.
The Necessity of Finding the “Us” and Not Focusing on the “Them”
News of the deadly bombs that ripped apart the Brussels airport terminal last month sent a shockwave through me. I know that line, that place. I have stood in that spot. The “what if” scenario is not what troubles me most, however.
How Do You Teach This Stuff?
The question “How do you teach this stuff?” is what brought me to USC Shoah Foundation in 2010 to begin my training and work as a Master Teacher. I was beginning to understand that survivor testimony is the formative center of Holocaust education, that once a student begins to see Holocaust education content through the lens of testimony, the education and the student begin to change in ways that are profound.
