Stephen Smith Delivers Keynote Address at 12th Annual Council of Holocaust Educators Conference

The Center for Holocaust, Human Rights and Genocide Education (CHHANGE) is hosting its annual conference for Holocaust educators Friday, featuring USC Shoah Foundation executive director Stephen Smith as keynote speaker.

CHHANGE, based in New Jersey, addresses human rights and civil issues worldwide through its library and archives, teacher resources, educational programming, and community events.

The 12th Annual Council of Holocaust Educators conference is titled “Meeting the Common Core: Teaching the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights.” Smith will discuss how the USC Shoah Foundation is working to optimize its testimonies of genocide survivors for education, research and advocacy.

The New Jersey Department of Education and the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education will give presentations about integrating genocide education into the Common Core State Standards.

Noah Rauch, assistant director of school and family programs at the 9/11 Memorial Museum, will speak about utilizing 9/11 testimonies in the classroom. Linda H. Michalski, theology chairperson at the Benedictine Academy in Elizabeth, New Jersey, will talk about human trafficking and slavery in America.

IWitness, USC Shoah Foundation’s educational website, is aligned with Common Core State Standards. IWitness provides access to nearly 1,300 full life histories, testimonies of survivors and other witnesses to the Holocaust and other genocides for guided exploration. Students can watch testimonies and use them in individual or group multimedia projects; teachers can assign activities as classwork or homework, and can even custom-build their own lessons and activities. The testimonies are searchable by more than 9,000 keywords, enabling students to pinpoint exact moments of interest within each testimony, which averages two hours in length.