Last week a group of twenty-two teachers, educators, and community organizers from across the United States gathered to take part in a new Voice of Witness training workshop called “Amplifying Unheard Voices: The Power of the Story.”
The week included talks and workshops from Voice of Witness staff, as well as from teachers who had participated last year in a pilot project with Voice of Witness and Facing History and Ourselves. Ethics of oral history, curriculum support, tools for utilizing oral history in the classroom, and possible future projects were all discussed.
Cliff Mayotte, the Education Program Director at Voice of Witness who facilitated the training, said, ” ‘Nourishing empathy’ became one of the mottos of the training. I was blown away by how each participant was able to
infuse this into every aspect of their practice. All of us were inspired to be creating curricular resources that were grounded in empathy.”
In addition, the participants were able to put the methods into practice by crafting their own oral histories over the four days, which were then shared at the end of the training.
Kristin Levine, a workshop participant from San Dominico High School wrote, “Being guided through the oral history process step-by-step gave me the confidence to teach this to my students.”
The training prepared the participants to share oral history curriculum and Voice of Witness books in numerous classes, reaching more than 600 students in subject areas ranging from English to History.
