Honors English Students Learn About HolocaustHolocaust. Genocide. Slavery. Racism. Intolerance.
Those are some of the words and events students in Chris Foster's Freshman Honors English class have been using and studying since before Christmas break.
Foster has been teaching the ninth-grade students a unit on the Holocaust. This week, the students gave presentations on various segments of the Holocaust history up to present day. After returning from spring break in April, the class will travel to the Holocaust museum in Chicago to further their education.The students started the unit by doing research papers. Each student had a section of the Holocaust to research. They all had to also read the books "Night" and "Dawn" by Elie Wiesel.
Students then partnered up and had to develop presentations on their papers. Those presentations were given this week.
Every student also had to do a poster that related to their segment of the Holocaust. They had to do a display and give a Power Point presentation. Part of their presentation had to be interactive.
Giving their presentation Wednesday afternoon were Kiara Stewart and Megan Donley. Titled "Relating to the Holocaust to Present Day," the two students talked about the definitions of genocide, slavery, racism, religious persecution and intolerance. They showed how genocide has happened in the past couple of decades in places like Darfur, Bosnia and Rwanda.
After their presentation, Foster talked to the class more about genocide in Bosnia and Darfur. She told the students how the U.S. today is the third largest importer of sex slaves in the world. It's also very easy to get sucked into hate crimes, she said.
What kind of things can we do to make these kind of things stop? she asked. The world has to find ways to solve its problems without violence. She said the world needs to make people count.
Foster will be traveling to a genocide forum in April on how to get students active in the struggle against atrocities such as genocide. The forum is sponsored by the Holocaust Museum and Education Center.
One of the reasons for the Holocaust unit, Foster said, is that the theme for the ninth grade at WCHS is leadership and decision making. The school wants students to look at the world around them, learn as much as they can and contribute to the world to become good citizens and decision makers.
Students in Foster's class said they learned many things from the unit.
"It was good to learn about it and realize the world isn't perfect," said Tim Ahlersmeyer.
His presentation was on the actual genocide that killed millions of Jews during World War II. He said he was surprised at "the number of Jews that died."
Katrina Nunez said, "Mrs. Foster talked to us about how if you take English away from history, you miss a lot of aspects of life. If they come together, it makes them come alive."
She said the unit provided her with eight different perspectives on what happened during the Holocaust.
"I enjoyed it," said Alexis Laureano of the unit. "I learned many different things I didn't know before."
She said she liked studying deeper into the Holocaust and learning facts people don't know.
Laureano and Nunez did their presentation together. Laureano said their presentation was on "Life Before the Holocaust". They talked about how the Jews were discriminated against since the beginning of time.
"As God's chosen people," Nunez said of the Jews, "they have been able to come through all this by the will of God and His power."
"I thought it was very interesting and I learned a lot from it," said Justin McBroom.
He said genocide still goes on today and is still as bad as during the Holocaust in some areas. His presentation was on "Nazi Medical Experiments".
"It was pretty horrible all the different experiments done on people," McBroom said. "There was a lot of inhumane experiments on people. It made me realize how cruel people can be and made me think how I don't want people to be that way."
Austin Reynolds said, "It was really eye opening to learn all this. I didn't know hardly any of this. To know that this is still going on today, it's hard to handle."
