H.S. 670 Thurgood Marshall Academy For Learning And Social Change, Harlem, New York, District 5

Visit 1: February 10, 2009
Visit 2: February 11, 2009
Visit 3: February 26, 2009
Visit 4: March 4, 2009

Tenth-grade students participated in an interdisciplinary study of the Holocaust. They read The Diary of Anne Frank in their English class and studied the Holocaust in their history class.  Class discussions were led by Francine Prose, author of A Changed Man (winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize) and Anne Frank: the Book, the Life, the Afterlife, about the contemporary significance of Anne Frank’s story. In their English class, students wrote journal entries about their own lives to study the personal narrative form. They then wrote their own personal narratives based on their journal entries. Behind the Book partnered with the Anne Frank Center, who brought in a teaching artist to help students create self-portraits to accompany their narratives. Students also visited the Anne Frank Center in SoHo and were introduced to a Holocaust survivor.

This study was complemented by Ishmael Beah's visit, which tackled the contemporary effects of genocide and introduced the modern genocide in Sierra Leone.

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