Echoes and Reflections Debuts New Website and Teacher’s Guide

Echoes and Reflections, the multimedia Holocaust education program of which USC Shoah Foundation is a founding partner, introduced a brand-new website and updated teacher’s guide that includes new content and reflects the most current pedagogy for teaching about the Holocaust.

Echoes and Reflections is a multimedia Holocaust education program that provides US secondary educators with professional development and print and online resources to teach about the Holocaust in today's classrooms. It combines the resources and competencies of three world leaders in education―the Anti-Defamation League, USC Shoah Foundation and Yad Vashem ―resulting in the most comprehensive Holocaust education program available.

Echoes and Reflections includes everything educators need to teach the complex issues of the Holocaust, including primary source documents, photographs and testimony clips of Holocaust survivors from USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive. Each lesson within the Echoes and Reflections Teacher’s Resource Guide explores a different aspect of the Holocaust and encourages students in grades 6-12 to build an authentic and comprehensive portrait of the past as they frame their own thoughts, resulting in a deeper level of interest and inquiry.

The new website provides downloadable PDFs of all the documents and handouts for each lesson. Teachers can also play testimony clips directly from the website (in addition to the DVD provided with each Teacher’s Resource Guide) and connect directly with IWitness, USC Shoah Foundation’s interactive educational website.

The Teacher’s Resource Guide itself has been updated to reflect current scholarship in Holocaust education and modified instructional strategies. There are also new activities for students, new primary source documents and artwork, and opportunities for students to reflect and respond to different topics. The guide also shows how each lesson addresses Common Core State Standards.

The new website features new opportunities for teachers to connect with each other, share feedback and find Echoes and Reflections professional development programs in their area.