Our Process

This project was not a traditional research paper or presentation. Instead, students engaged in an immersive learning experience that invited them to:

• Engage in Interdisciplinary learning: Students learned about World War 1 and the Weimar Republic through Facing History and Ourselves curriculmum in social studies in order to understand the conditions that led to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany; in English, they learned the systematic steps that were taken to remove Jews and other groups of “undesirables” from German society once the Nazi’s attained power.  Through historical simulations and a memoir study of Elie Wiesel’s “Night,” students arrived at a deeper understanding of the content prior to the project launch. They grappled with the nuances of history-not just what happened, but why it happened and what it means.

• Research deeply: Students investigated their assigned Holocaust topics deeply, reading primary source documents, watching documentaries, and learning the stories of real people. They accessed hours of testimony footage in their research from the Shoah foundation’s iWitness lab to learn the true stories of survivors and emotionally engage with their topics.  

• Learn about symbolism, elements of art and principles of design in order to create powerful artifacts: One of Fenn’s veteran studio art teachers co-taught lessons on elements of art, principles of design and symbolism to build students’ foundational understanding of these concept before students engaged in their own concept design. Students engaged in design challenges before they started their concept sketches for their projects to integrate the elements and principles they had learned.  After these lessons, student groups proposed physical artifacts to represent their topic. These artifacts use symbols and visual language to express big ideas about the Holocaust.  They received feedback from teachers and engaged in a design thinking process to iterate on their ideas.  

• Produce documentaries: Students participated in the study of a variety of documentaries to build their understanding of the medium, deconstructing the parts of each documentary they saw.  They transferred notes from their research into a group storyboard to build out the arc of their narrative. They delved into script writing, receiving feedback to enhance their storytelling, before making final revisions. Ultimately, they created short documentary videos explaining their topics that integrated all they had learned about their topic, including primary sources and testimonial clips to make the viewer experience more compelling.

• Write artist statements: One of the challenging tasks was for students to articulate their thinking about their artistic choices and process in an artist statement. They explained their topic, how they interpreted it, and then created meaning in the form of an artifact through the use of symbolism and a variety of artistic choices.  

• Learn from others: Students heard from a Jewish teacher about the meaning of this project from his perspective after seeing statistics about anti-Semitism in the United States and seeing examples of discrimination and hateful acts in their local communities.  They listened to the story of a Fenn parent whose grandparents were incarcerated in a Japanese-American Internment camp in the United States. They engaged in a lesson about making interactive museum exhibits with educators from the Concord Museum.  They heard from a Holocaust survivor. 

• Transform the Stone Family Innovation Lab into a Museum: After weeks of work, students helped transform the Stone Family Innovation Lab into a Holocaust Museum. They share their work with families and an outside audience.  

Throughout this process, students learned that history is not just something that happened to other people in other times. It's a story we all have a responsibility to understand and share and to shape our own decisions as citizens.