Digital Curriculum for High School and Middle School Classrooms
Our curriculum materials focus on historical inquiry and close, empathetic listening. Lessons and activities incorporate elements of the Fortunoff Archive’s interview method and scholarly approaches to testimony to help students work with this complex historical source. We situate each testimony in a deeper historical context and emphasize that testimonies give rise to difficult questions. Our first digital curriculum unit—Race and Citizenship in Nazi Germany and Jim Crow United States—is now available online, and we are working on a second unit, which will share additional testimonies from our collection.
The Fortunoff Video Archive’s Curriculum Development Fellow, Dr. Agnieszka Aya Marczyk, has worked with teachers and scholars to make these materials rigorous and flexible for adaptations in a variety of courses and school settings. Please read our Introduction for Teachers to explore our approach. We are deeply grateful to all teachers who have worked with us on this project—Leslie Blatteau, Lindsey Rossler, members of our Teacher Advisory Council, and many others who have generously shared their insights and ideas.
Education has been at the heart of the Fortunoff Archive’s mission since its beginnings, and we are delighted to return to a partnership with Facing History and Ourselves as we disseminate these materials and offer joint programming for educators. We invite you to join our community of practice to learn about upcoming professional learning sessions and meetings with scholars. If you have any questions, please reach out to us at fortunoff.archive@yale.edu.
Unit 1
