Teaching American History Application Survey

Summer Institute 2010

Website Week #2

Immigration in a Changing World: Identity, Citizenship, and Belonging

Facing History and Ourselves: http://www.facinghistory.org Facing History and Ourselves is an internationally recognized educational nonprofit enterprise that develops innovative classroom resources and techniques to teach today’s students about civic responsibility, tolerance, and social action. Of most relevance to our program are the Educator Resources, including units on Immigration and Survivor Profiles. Each of these link to lesson plans, contemporary issues, online videos, and suggestions for further reading and film previews. Materials almost always come with discussion questions and suggestions about how they can be used in the classroom. In addition, teachers will want to explore the on-line modules, especially “Choosing to Participate,” “Becoming American” and “Race and Membership.”

Houston’s Holocaust Museum: http://www.hmh.org
Houston’s Holocaust Museum contains exhibits and archival collections dedicated to preserving the memory of the Holocaust and raising awareness regarding continuing genocides today. Of most interest to our program is the searchable database of on-line oral histories with Holocaust survivors living in Houston. To search the database, look under Resources – Holocaust Resources – Oral History Project. Other valuable information can be found under Resources – Genocide Resources, where there is background information on recent and continuing genocides and information about what Americans can do in response. In addition to the lesson plans offered under Educator Resources, the Houston Holocaust Museum also ships gratis “Curriculum Trunks,” educational resources geared to specific ages that use the Holocaust as an example to raise awareness about prejudice.

The Sarah and Sam Schoffer Holocaust Resource Center, Richard Stockton College: http://www.stockton.edu/~holocaus/hrc.htm
A joint project of the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey and the Jewish Federation of Atlantic and Cape May Counties, the Sarah and Sam Schoffer Holocaust Resource Center is located on the second floor of the Stockton College Library. The Center holds a range of resources including books and other publications, an oral history collection of Holocaust survivors in New Jersey, and lesson plans on the Holocaust as well as a range of contemporary issues about genocide and racial discrimination, violence, and amelioration. It has also published and co-published several books, and hosts public and professional development programs about the history of the Holocaust and ongoing genocide concerns.

Holocaust Museum and Learning Center: http://www.hmlc.org The Holocaust Museum and Learning Center (HMLC), a department of the Jewish Federation of St. Louis, opened in May 1995. It includes a 5,000-square-foot core exhibition that provides an overview of the Holocaust, as well as personal accounts of Holocaust survivors who immigrated to the St. Louis region. The HMLC sponsors temporary exhibits, public lectures, a monthly-film series, and teacher-training workshops. The HMLC also houses a comprehensive video library with over 500 titles and an oral history project with over 150 testimonies that are available to educators and the public. Of particular interest to ONMAP participants, the website includes an “Education” section with a range of both pre- and post-visit activities, useful even if a classroom does not visit the museum itself, and the “Memory Project,” featuring interviews with eight holocaust survivors; each provided between four and a dozen discussions on different topics. Liz Lippa’s interview, one of the primary documents for this workshop, is drawn from this collection.

U.S. Holocaust Museum: http://www.ushmm.org Since its dedication in 1993, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has hosted nearly 30 million visitors, including more than 9 million school children, and its website has become one the world’s leading online authority on the Holocaust, with more than 25 million visits in 2008 alone. The Education section of the website includes well-developed descriptions of resources for both teachers and students, including guidelines for teaching the Holocaust, additional resources and materials on Nazi ideology, maps, resistance efforts, and contemporary prevention efforts, as well as over two dozen lesson plans and teacher guides. These last sources range from historical lessons about the Holocaust and its impact, to activities about discrimination, individual responsibility, and genocide today. The student resource section provides access to articles on a range of historical topics about World War II, Nazi ideology, and the Holocaust arranged chronologically—which would be very useful in developing student projects—as well as links to online activities. Finally, the History section of the website provides links to both online exhibitions and the “What is Genocide Project,” an effort to track the impact of and responses to ongoing racial and ethnic conflicts around the world. Both Nesse Godin’s and Raphael Lemkin’s interviews, included as primary documents for this workshop, are drawn from this program.

Library of Congress, American Memory, “Immigration…” http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/themes/immigration/index.html and http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/
presentations/immigration/introduction.html
The Library of Congress has two websites that include compilations of their wide array of its resources pertaining to immigration. Resources include primary sources, on-line exhibitions, collections, and lesson plans. Although much of their material focuses on the early 20th century, of particular note is a website that contains interviews with immigrants conducted between 2004 and 2006, which is searchable by their country of origin. For details, see http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities
/presentations/immigration/interv/toc.php.

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