USC Shoah to host workshop on teaching Armenian Genocide

April 4, 2019 - 12:56 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - USC Shoah Foundation will host a no cost interactive, in-person professional development workshop open to all middle school and high school educators (5th-12th grade) April 6, on the campus of the University of Southern California, Asbarez reports.

In honor of Genocide Awareness Month, the workshop, “Teaching with Testimony: The Armenian Genocide” offers educators the opportunity to learn how to effectively teach the Armenian Genocide across the curriculum with audiovisual testimonies of Armenian survivors, foreign witnesses and scholars of the Armenian Genocide and Armenian descendants.

“Testimony offers us the opportunity to hear story from the individual perspective, which adds to our understanding beyond the dates and humanizes history. In a month where we are memorializing such atrocities, we must uphold the individual,” Head of Programs, Education at USC Shoah Foundation Lesly Culp, a 20-year English Language Arts educator said about the importance of using testimony in the classroom.

By attending this workshop, educators will discover USC Shoah Foundation’s educational website, IWitness. It provides unique primary and secondary sources that strengthen students’ understanding of the life of the Armenian people before, during and after the Armenian Genocide. With access to multimedia testimony-based resources, educators will gain confidence to navigate IWitness to build historical understanding of the Armenian Genocide and responsibility in students.

Space for this workshop is limited Register online. Participants are requested to bring laptops and headphones.

The Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide (1915-23) was the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was characterized by massacres and deportations, involving forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of deaths reaching 1.5 million.

The majority of Armenian Diaspora communities were formed by the Genocide survivors.

Present-day Turkey denies the fact of the Armenian Genocide, justifying the atrocities as “deportation to secure Armenians”. Only a few Turkish intellectuals, including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk and scholar Taner Akcam, speak openly about the necessity to recognize this crime against humanity.

The Armenian Genocide was recognized by Uruguay, Russia, France, Lithuania, Italy, 45 U.S. states, Greece, Cyprus, Lebanon, Argentina, Belgium, Austria, Wales, Switzerland, Canada, Poland, Venezuela, Chile, Bolivia, the Vatican, Luxembourg, Brazil, Germany, the Netherlands, Paraguay, Sweden, Venezuela, Slovakia, Syria, Vatican, as well as the European Parliament and the World Council of Churches.