“They were engaged in history all day,” Andrea Stupp said proudly.
And it was a difficult time for students to be engaged in anything. They were due to get out of school early on April 11 and start a 10-day vacation. Their final chore of the week was an assignment on the Holocaust.
That’s nothing new. The middle school holds a Holocaust Remembrance Day with guest speakers every year. But this year the program was different. Each eighth-grade class received six boxes filled with documents from 1935-45
There were photographs, post cards, report cards, ID cards, birthday cards and journals. Some were copies of documents (with translations) from the Yad Vashem Archives. Ms. Stupp created others using actual information.
This is her third year in the school district. Before coming to the middle school, she worked as a leave replacement in the high school for two years, which is where she met her friend and mentor, Nancy Maguire.
Mrs. Maguire is now retired from teaching, but that didn’t keep her from helping with the project, which had at least two goals:
-To involve students in first-hand research, and
-To get them thinking for themselves instead of copying notes from a textbook or blackboard.
The documents in the boxes all related to people who were 13 to 16 years of age at the time. That may have helped the students identify with the subjects of their research. The speakers who visit the school every year are excellent, but they’re all removed from their audience by several generations.
To promote the April 11 program, Ms. Stupp sent letters home in advance. That seemed to help, because attendance was higher than usual for the last day before vacation. “The kids found ways to be there,” the teacher said.
The students took a break from their research to hear two guest speakers in the auditorium. “The kids asked great questions,” Ms. Stupp said later. “And both visitors commented on how good the audience was.”
Despite the tendency to ease into a vacation, the kids seemed to appreciate the assignment. A number of them sent e-mails to Ms. Stupp saying that they liked it.
“It was really a wonderful experience,” she remarked.