We are offering both virtual and traveling teaching trunks during the 2021 – 2022 school year. The traveling teaching trunks will be available starting January 1, 2022. Virtual teaching trunks are available during the entire school year.
Virtual Trunk: Holocaust: Historical Perspectives through Different Voices (Grades 7 -12)
In this virtual teaching trunk, students will focus on the historical impact of the Holocaust on individuals, such as life in hiding, the ghettos, and camps.
Themes:
- Human and moral implications of individual choice, responsibility, and memory
- Influences on decisions to become a bystander
- Actions that encourage becoming an Upstander
Materials:
- Ready-made lesson plans for teachers to use synchronously or asynchronously
- Rentable e-books and corresponding activities & questions
- Survival in Auschwitz
- All But My Life
- The Cage
- The Christmas Menorahs
- Access to our online exhibition on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, including extension activities
- Artwork and activities from the Museum’s Act of Art gallery
- Virtual “artefact” explorations featuring the amazing survival stories of local Chicagoland Holocaust Survivors
- Documentaries of Chicagoland Survivors’ Holocaust experiences and corresponding teachers’ guide
Virtual Trunk: On Our Watch: Genocide and Human Rights (Grades 7-12)
Students will have the opportunity to expand their knowledge of the Holocaust and begin reflecting on the complexities of human rights violations and genocide. Resources will engage students in the exploration of genocides in Armenia, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur, as well as human rights abuses against Japanese-Americans during World War II and child soldier recruitment in countries such as Uganda and Sierra Leone.
Through this combination of history and the examination of human behavior, we provide educators and students with tools necessary to explore the precarious nature of human and civil rights, and delve into the dynamics and relationships that make up our diverse communities.
Materials:
- Ready-made lesson plans for teachers to use synchronously or asynchronously
- Rentable e-books and corresponding activities & questions
- We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda
- Black Dog of Fate
- First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers
- Presentations on the genocides in Rwanda, Armenia, Cambodia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina
- Presentation focused on Upstanders and resistance during genocides
- Artwork and activities from the Museum’s Act of Art gallery
Historical Perspectives through Different Voices (Grades 7 -8)
This trunk is available beginning January 1, 2022. Through examination of fiction and non-fiction, diaries, and biographies, students will focus on the historical impact of the Holocaust on individuals and be introduced to the more detailed history of the Holocaust, such as life in hiding, ghettos, and camps.
Materials:
- Ready-made lesson plans for teachers to use synchronously or asynchronously
- Rentable e-books and corresponding activities & questions
- Bearing Witness: Stories of the Holocaust
- Torn Thread
- Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow
- Replica textiles, documents, and photographs
Survivor Stories: Holocaust Eyewitness Mini Trunks (Grades 7-12)
This trunk is available beginning January 1, 2022. Bring history to life through the personal memoirs and testimonies of Survivors and learn by handling replicas of artifacts from the Museum’s photography and document collection.
This teaching trunk highlights the lives of Holocaust Survivors and features stories of their personal journeys of endurance, resiliency, and strength during the Holocaust. Included in these mini teaching trunks are literature circle sets of survivor memoirs, mini-documentary films, and “artefact” kits that include replicas of many objects from the Museum’s collection. This Survivor-focused trunk will allow educators to facilitate robust conversations addressing the following questions:
- How did a boy survive for two years, alone in an attic?
- How did 599 female prisoners working in a factory help keep a young girl alive in Auschwitz?
- How did a sister save her young brother by keeping him hidden in a concentration camp?
- What can we learn from the paintings of a teenage boy in hiding?
Materials:
- Will to Live: One Family’s Story of Surviving the Holocaust by Adam Starkopf
- Lucie’s Hope by George Mueller
- The Promise by Eva Schloss and Barbara Powers
- Final Transports: The Holocaust Stories of Magda and George (documentary) and teachers’ guide
- Childhood Lost: The Holocaust Stories of George and Steen (documentary) and teachers’ guide
Investigating Human Behavior (Grades 9-12)
This trunk is available January 1, 2022. This trunk provides a comprehensive study of the history of the Holocaust through an analysis of human behavior and the categories of victim, perpetrator, bystander, helper, and collaborator. With this curriculum, students will analyze connecting themes including the human and moral implications of individual choice, responsibility, and memory. The trunk provides a framework to discuss what influences our decisions to be bystanders, and what encourages us to become Upstanders.
Materials:
- Salvaged Pages
- A Partisan’s Memoir
- A Scrap of Time
- Replica textiles, documents, and photographs
On Our Watch: Genocide and Human Rights (Grades 7-12)
This trunk is available January 1, 2022. Students will have the opportunity to expand their knowledge of the Holocaust and begin reflecting on the complexities of human rights violations and genocide. Resources will engage students in the exploration of genocides in Armenia, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur, as well as human rights abuses against Japanese-Americans during World War II and child soldier recruitment in countries such as Uganda and Sierra Leone.
Materials:
- Not on Our Watch: A Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond
- Confronting Genocide: Never Again
- Looking Like The Enemy: My Story of Imprisonment in Japanese American In Japanese American Internment Camps
- DVDs, posters
