9th grade students take a field trip to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Date: Sat, 14 Dec 1996 15:57:44 -0500 (EST)
From: "N. Hagerstown High School"
Our interdisciplinary team has developed a unit on Tolerance and the Holocaust entitled "The Beast Within." The web page that grew from this unit has been on our website for the past year at http://www.fred.net/nhhs/html/beast.htm.
As the central activity for the unit, our 9th grade students take a field trip to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. We do our best to prepare the students using traditional resources such as texts and films, readings, and discussion-lecture. We also use the poster set provided by the Holocaust Museum to alert the students as to which artifacts and concepts to be aware of as they move through the museum's exhibit.
As a follow-up, we have had our students write their reaction to the museum, and then we post these reactions to our site. We invite you and your students, whether you are teaching on an elementary, secondary or post-secondary level, to review our students' reactions as both an exercise in Holocaust Education but also in pedagogy. It is fascinating to see how the students learn about the Holocaust, but there is certainly a process of UNlearning as well, as the students assimilate and accommodate facts they knew or thought they knew.
The URL for student writings is: http://www.fred.net/nhhs/html/tripintr.htm (Introduction)
Directly to the writings: http://www.fred.net/nhhs/html/holoreac.htm.
The students benefit most when they receive the enlightened wisdom of other students and scholars. The Internet allows those with personal and professional experiences to share them with our students. We hope that you will be moved to communicate your feelings and knowledge on the historical, personal, and sociological importance of the Holocaust.
From my own standpoint, the Holocaust has one of the widest-ranging and most important applications throughout the whole of Social Studies as it is taught in the secondary schools today. Your input might make those lessons become a reality for our students, and through the broad-based publishing that is possible with the World Wide Web, those lessons can be learned by all who visit our website.
Thanks in advance,
George Cassutto
Teacher of Social Studies
North Hagerstown High School (MD)