A Teacher Asks: What Would You Be Willing To Stand Up For?
A language arts teacher at Westlake High School in Ohio, Laura Miller created Stand Up, a video (that she uploaded permanently on the popular video hosting site YouTube) featuring participants at the Facing History seminar "Holocaust and Human Behavior," Facing History staff, and students at John Carroll University who answer the question, "What would you stand up for?" People responded passionately about human rights, genocide, faith, and their students. For Laura, this type of creation seemed both personal and natural: "...there's this part of me that likes to try to paint a real picture of people with words, video, and photos. I was really impressed with the group of people I met during the seminar; there were so many talented, intelligent, kind, and open-minded people in our group. Our experience together was temporary, so I thought it would be a way to preserve the diversity of their involvement in our world."
Laura's focus on participation was an inspiration from her week-long experience of the seminar: "I think that it's so easy to go through life from day to day focusing on your own individual concerns. When you think for just a moment about what you want your role to be, what you'd be willing to stand up for, it becomes...one of the things you can be concerned with each day. I think it's important for each of us to know what we'd stand up for... that's probably the most important thing I learned in the [seminar]."
Laura's video was part of a Memory and Legacy project at the seminar. Memory and legacy are integral parts of Facing History's pedagogy that asks students to explore the ways we remember the past and how those memories shape the present. This project was introduced at the seminar after a study of identity and membership, an examination of a particular historical case study and the choices of individuals and nations during that pivotal time, and an exploration of questions of judgment. Participants were asked to create something original - artwork, a journal entry, a poem, or whatever they choose. The goal is to help participants reflect upon the week that they spent engaging with Facing History and Ourselves' content and themes (and with each other) throughout the seminar week, and to give them tools to incorporate themes of memory and legacy into their classrooms.
Our week long seminars introduce educators to innovative strategies and resources that connect history to the moral choices students face today. This past summer, we conducted 45 seminars across the U.S. and internationally reaching over 1100 educators.
