Field Trip

Once TAKS has been administered, it is difficult to get students to focus on anything. The Language Arts department had them read “The Diary of Anne Frank” and then the students compared the book with the movie. To further extend the lesson, we took them to the Holocaust Memorial Museum located in the northwest part of the city. The Jewish Community Center sponsored us ~ no outlay of funds!

First on our tour: we viewed a video: ‘The Holocaust Through The Eyes of Children’ telling their story gleaned from diaries, journals, and eyewitness accounts of survivors. The video had classical music to set the tone and I know I won’t be able to listen to Canon in D the same way. Did you know that conservatively 1.5 million children were killed?

Next, we had a tour of their museum; no larger than the average classroom it was filled with history. We were given a brief timeline of events leading up to the Holocaust through the end of WWII. Due to time constraints and supervising students, I was not able to peruse the exhibit.

We were able to listen to a survivor of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, the same one that Anne Frank and her family were in. Rose Williams gave a riveting account of her ordeal that spanned nearly six years. It was hard to listen to the atrocities that were inflicted upon her and millions more but her story had to be told. She showed us the tattoo that reduced her from a person to a number in camp. We were all moved by her story and our students surprised us. They asked questions such as: Were you able to forgive? How did your faith sustain you? When we returned to campus, students had a plethora of questions for me. I also recommended some books for them to read including "Schindler’s List."

The following quote was in the museum and it sums up why I teach:

“The world is too dangerous to live in not because of the people who do evil, but because of the people who let it happen.” --Albert Einstein

~ba