Are You Listening? – by Shayna K.
Knowledge is Power – by Jasmine L.
A Core Value at BCD: Citizenship – We guide members of our diverse community to become ethical, engaged, and informed global citizens.
For the fourth year, Eighth Grade History teacher Sarah Pitcher-Hoffman engaged her students in service work through the IWitness Video Challenge. IWitness is an educational website developed by USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education that provides access to nearly 1,300 full-life histories, testimonies of survivors and witnesses to the Holocaust and other genocides for guided exploration. IWitness brings the human stories of the Institute’s Visual History Archive to secondary school teachers and their students via engaging multimedia-learning activities. Inspired by the testimonies of Holocaust survivors, the activities are designed to be participatory, academic and student-driven.
And, for the fourth year in a row, our Eighth Grade students have received special recognition. Shayna K.’s and Jasmine L.’s videos were chosen as two of the twenty videos that made it to the national finalist round. And, imagine our excitement and pride when we learned that Shayna’s video was chosen as the third place winner nationally!
Shayna made a video called “Are You Listening?” that raises awareness of identity, empathy, and what is like to be deaf in our society. Jasmine’s video was called “Knowledge is Power,” and she sought to empower others in her community through access to literacy and learning, collecting over 900 books to donate to Berkshire County Kids’ Place and Violence Prevention Center.
Congratulations and thank you for your inspired and inspiring work, Shayna, Jasmine, and Sarah!
